


Godmaker\\afterlife

by EverythingNarrative



Category: CYOA - Fandom, Construction/Management Simulation Games, Original Work
Genre: Body Horror, Brain Surgery, Consensual Mind Control, Explicit Sex, Exploration, Id Fic, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Multi, Other, Partial Mind Control, Politics, Portal Fantasy, Power Fantasy, Queer Themes, Recreational Drug Use, Science, Self-Indulgent, Shapeshifting, Surgery, Transhumanism, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2020-06-22 10:00:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 34,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19665142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverythingNarrative/pseuds/EverythingNarrative
Summary: Tackle is plucked from present day Earth, through the realm of dreams, into an unforgiving afterlife and granted a godhood.Stuck in an unfamiliar fantastic world with strangely familiar superhuman abilities, they set out to make sense of it all, find closure with a life they can most likely never return to, and gain some purpose with their new existence.





	1. On the Flipside of Dreaming

I come to my senses supine on grass-covered hard ground, with a fading dream in the back of my mind that puts the David Lynch’s ventures in surrealist cinema to shame. There’s a faint smell of hay in the fresh air.

There’s also a gnawing feeling in the back of my mind, like something is about to happen, and the only thing preventing it is anticipating my explicit order. An extra limb that I can’t see, maybe. Maybe ten extra limbs. Somehow I don’t want to know the details.

I pinch myself, hard. I count backwards from one-hundred. I find a bare patch of dirt and draw the face of a clock with a finger, and sign it with my name.

Not dreaming.

The bright sun hangs overhead. I wasn’t drinking yesterday. I’m not in my house. I should be alarmed, but again that feeling in the back of my mind is weirdly comforting to me, and my comfort sparks further anxiety. I sit up and feel myself with my hands to make sure I’m still me, which it seems like.

Human. Mostly intact, save for the missing finger joint. Late twenties or so. I’d be athletic if I had time to run and lift, but instead I have half-a- grad-student’s PTSD.

«Hello?» I say, and look around. The grass is too tall, so I stand and brush the prickly vegetation off the back of my tank top and pyjamas pants. I’m in the middle of some sort of wild grassland. The horizon seems a little wonky.

«This isn’t funny,» I call out. Nobody. No phone. If this is a prank, it’s in bad taste. «Where the fuck am I?»

I turn around to survey my surroundings. Empty steppe as far as the eye can see and in the middle distance: a tent. I begin walking, and it’s thankfully not all that far — the dry grass cut at my bare feet.

Around it, the grass has been thoroughly trampled, and the remains of several fire pits dot the area. A campsite? It’s a very small tent; I duck inside. «Hello?»

The smell of piss and shit hits my nostrils like a hammer and I almost retch. There’s a small firepit in the middle, and by it lies what looks to be a geriatric woman dressed in rags, fallen over from sitting cross-legged. Over the stench of ammonia and thiols, I can smell burnt incense. Stepping carefully to avoid the filth, I move to her side and check her pulse. It’s rapid and faint. I pinch her skin and it sticks in place, indicating dehydration.

Scouring the small hut, I find a few water skins which are all empty.

Considering my options, the solution is obvious. Without really knowing why or how I know, I flex that feeling of an extra appendage, and out of my shadow, cast opposite the sun shining through the smoke hole, a machine _unfolds._

It’s not a normal machine; it is biomechanical and Giger-esque, and I flex it like I might a hand, before gently stretching out two sheets of plastic and stamping them together around a tube. I fill the plastic bag I’ve just created with dextrose-saline solution, extrude a plastic pipe, and flash forge an injection needle; all of this equipment grows and emerges in spectacular and slightly horrid fashion from within that place in my mind, before all collapsing into there again.

And then I’m left with an IV bag and an alcohol-wipe, more bewildered than I was when I first woke up.

_This isn’t happening. I’m most likely having a psychotic break; or perhaps this is a vivid coma dream…_

I calm myself with a deep breath.

Until such a time as an actionable strategy of radical skepticism presents itself, one has to continue acting as if one’s senses are trustworthy.

Shaking off my dread, I find a place in overhead struts to tie the bag, and then I kneel down and find a vein in her arm to clumsily insert the needle into. Thankfully my hands seem steadier than ever and I have some sort of hitherto undiscovered talent at handling needles.

The IV begins running, and I monitor her for a little while longer to make sure I haven’t given her an air-bubble embolism with my shoddy needlework, before going outside to escape the stench.

_What the fuck is going on?_

I try to think back to what I remember: going to bed slightly tipsy after an uneventful day at work. My social obligations nag — I have a doctor’s appointment today.

There’s something in between that and here; vague memories, an inexplicable feeling of clarity. I recall _choosing_ this, whatever it is, and I recall something that assuaged my fears.

I let out a sigh. Perhaps I should worry about my current situation.

Reaching out to… Whatever this power is, I unfold another production setup out of my shadow: casting polycarbonate in a steel gullet and grinding it into lenses and prisms with rotary fingers, fixing the optical assembly in casted thermoplastic housing. The unfolded assembler takes up more space than the tent, but it is fast and eerily quiet. Within a half minute, I’m holding a pair of binoculars.

Next I convert it all to make a plastic step-ladder; I could probably cast it out of aluminum, but even the binoculars are _warm_ and I don’t want to deal with scalding hot metal.

I climb up, elevating myself by half-again my height, and take a look around which turns out to be very boring. Apart from animals, this grass plain is deserted. Boring is good; it means I’m not in danger.

There’s a noise in the tent — a grunt, followed by retching.

I duck inside the tent to find the old woman on all fours, wiping her mouth with one hand; a small puddle of bile on the ground. Her hair is matted and dirty, and her movements are shaky.

«Hey,» I say.

She looks up, with yellowed sclera and licks her chapped lips, and I watch realization dawn on her face. She grins, and says something in a language I don’t understand; some sort of exclamation. She struggles up to sitting, and looks at me.

«You came,» she says.

«You speak English?» I ask.

She shakes her head. «The tide pools bestow clarity; it is still with me. In a few moments I will lose it. We must speak now.»

«Where am I?» I ask.

«Vegatia, this world is called. You come from the Far Plane. I brought you here by deeply dreaming. I am a shaman.»

«You brought me here?»

«At your request, yes.»

«Does that mean I’m gone from Earth?»

She tilts her head, seeming to ponder what I said. «Oh; no, no. You had concerns about that. I Twinned you.»

I nod. It seems sensible-ish, if I’m understanding correctly. «Okay, so next question. What is this thing I can do?»

From my shadow, I grow a few sewing needle insect legs.

«You are a god. That is your divinity, if I have to guess.»

That just opens up so many questions. «Are there others like me?»

She nods. «Great shamans can bring gods from the Far Plane to Vegatia.»

If she’s right and we only have moments, then the rest of the questions can wait — although that kind of judgment is a recipe for getting in trouble later.

«You seem weak,» I say. «Why are you out here alone?»

She smiles sadly. «My tribe has no need of me anymore; I’ve taught my niece to take over as the medicine woman. I’ve also seen visions of myself falling sick, and I don’t think I have much time left. I stayed behind with all of my stores of Polkweed and a little food and water. I’ve been here a week now.»

«You expected to die,» I say.

«Yes.»

I nod and sit down. «You’re not going to die now,» I say. «I won’t allow it.»

She smiles. «I am thankful. Though I am old and at the moment filthy, I think you will find me a cunning servant, at least while I still draw breath.»

I shake my head. «I don’t need servants, I need a guide, and whatever is wrong with you, I’ll see if I can’t help.»

She holds up a hand. «My clarity is fading. I am Hanahana.»

«Call me Tackle,» I say.

She says my name back: TAH-kall, and giggles. Then she arduously shifts her thin legs under herself and prostrates herself before me.


	2. Distracted by the Shiny New Physics

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: surgery

There’s several problems to solve right off the bat. Hanahana is sick, but more importantly weak and probably recovering from intoxication. Her tribesmen are a week away on foot, or perhaps horseback, although there isn’t much difference.

First things first. I stand and step outside, and extrude some sheet metal, bending it into a cylinder with a strong tongue. A set of teeth punches out a disk which my antennae electro-weld on. A barrel. Extruding a short length of steel pipe, I ram a hole in the side near the bottom and cast a thermoplastic tap, shower head, and joiner; extrude a plastic hose, and put the tap before the shower head for ease of operation. Last, I add metal rods, welding them together into a stand that raises the barrel above head-height.

I fill the barrel with warm water, and unfold a chemical reactor. In its gullet I hydrogenate carbon into oils and acid and then soap from that. With heat and vigorous stirring the reaction takes mere minutes, I run the impure product through filtering pseudo-kidneys to produce a tub — freshly cast thermoplastic — of bland but serviceable soap.

I duck inside to find Hanahana sitting more or less where I left her. She’s inspecting the IV in her arm. I bend down to her, and she looks at me while I remove the needle from her arm. I produce a little fluff of cellulose to put on the wound and bend her elbow around it. I stand and gesture for her to rise, before helping her up. Outside I’m busy printing a table and some chairs from ceramic, and unfolding a spidery loom to weave and sew us some better clothes.

Hanahana surveys all this quiet commotion outside her tent with interest. I guide her to the shower. Seeing her infirmity, I add some hand-holds to the frame and put down a stool to sit on. I guide her to support herself and tug on her ragged tunic.

She says something, which I don’t understand.

I show her the operation of the shower head, running the water over her arm. She understands the concept, even though it is my guess she has never seen an actual shower. She begins undressing, seemingly without paying mind to modesty, reaches for the shower head and turns the water to her back. I hand her the tub of soap.

She doesn’t understand the purpose of that either, so I take her arm arm, caked in bile, and apply a dollop of soap, showing her how to lather it in and rinse it off. Underneath the layer of grime, she has intricate tattoos of animal motifs and symbols I don’t recognize.

Last, I’ve cast a plastic comb for her hair. This one she knows, thankfully, and I leave her to shower in peace.

Now I turn my mind towards the problem of food. My abilities of extrusion preclude anything except something as appetizing as a nutritionally complete paste; although seemingly not a hard limitation, that. Adding a little more starch, sugar, salt, and saturated fats, and cooling with icy breath it to well below ambient temperature produces a passable power bar.

This limitation grates, and I begin wondering how to circumvent it. To mind springs various production line setups that turn base extrusions into more complex components. Obvious in retrospect, really, but still, beyond horrifically artificial stuff, food is beyond me.

That is, until I discover a tool I didn’t know I had on hand. Unfolding the necessary equipment, I open an envelope of altered spacetime with a set of exotically constructed eyelashes. Tossing a ball bearing through it, I see it slow to a crawl during the passage, and then speed up on exit. Picking it up and inspecting it with a probing ultrasound finger, I find that it has thermal stress fractures inside. Flipping the polarity of the field and repeating the experiment makes the bearing speed up instead.

I’m brought out of my experimentational reverie by Hanahana calling out to me.

She’s sitting there, under the shower, clean and smiling. I smile back, and prompt the loom to weave a bathrobe and towel. Although I cannot extrude true cotton fiber, cotton is almost pure cellulose, which I can make readily. Taking the heavy, luxuriously soft garment from the looms digits with my own hands, I gesture for Hanahana to come join me at the table.

She rises, somewhat steadier on her feet, turning off the tap for the shower head, and makes for the table, somewhat unsteady on her feet.

Before she has made it two steps, I’ve already cast her a cane, and I present it to her with the friendliest appendage I can manage — a human hand on a many jointed arm.

Somewhat wary, she takes the black plastic cane by the handle and makes it to the table without issue. I wrap her in the bathrobe and direct her to take a seat, then I roll up her hair in the towel.

I treat her to an opulent meal of three power bars and water in a plastic cup. She eats with delight, and I catch a glimpse of her teeth as she bites down. Judging by her almost full set, whatever diet her tribe has, seems to be low in sugars and starches; the foremost bane of dental health.

I snack on a power bar, while returning to my thoughts. With a reaping claw, I take a swathe of grass and sift it through steel baleens to find a single seed. I plant it in a scoop of soil, water it, encloses it in a box wit a growing lamp and open a time compression field over it. Pushing the limits of what I can achieve, I reach a time ratio of a day per second, and let the field run for thirty seconds like that. When I open the box, I find a withered, lanky sprout inside.

I file away time compressed hydroponics and cultured meat as new avenues of food production.

That problem solved, I turn my attention back to Hanahana. She’s obviously sick, but I don’t know of what. Fortunately I can unfold an ophanim-esque ring of metal eyes to function as an MRI and CT scanner in one.

I go to sit next to Hanahana, and I take her hand, and put my hand on her shoulder. She tilts her head somewhat when I bring forth a hypodermic proboscis. I shift my grip to her elbow, swab her skin in disinfectant saliva from a bristly tongue, and let the needle finds a vein on its own. It only takes a few millilitres for me to get what I need, and then I offer a cellulose fluff ball to stem the bleeding.

I sift her blood with care and precision through a sensitive gastric tract: a full workup, as medically complete as I can, which is an order of magnitude more so than modern medicine. She is fairly healthy, given her age, with adequate liver and kidney function, and of course a heavy toxicology owing to whatever drugs she’s been taking to facilitate her shamanism.

Four probing fingers slip inside her robe; she barely startles. Through these sensitive digits I take stock of her heart electrically and sonographically. She’s doing very well on that front.

Unfolding a gurney, I lift her with a dozen gentle hands and lay her to rest on it. She seems unperturbed by this, and obediently lies still as two eye-laden rings of gnarled alloy pass over her.

Osteoarthritis from hard work, some osteoporosis that par for her slight vitamin A deficiency. And then the jackpot: she’s indeed dying. Stage two bone cancer of the lower left femur; perhaps six months left to live.

I frown.

It’s off-putting to have such comprehensive and fundamentally unearned knowledge of medicine. I’m a humble programming consultant by trade. A very well paid one, but still, humble.

I turn to what I’ve unfolded of my… Factory. I’ve covered an acre or so in the wet dreams of surrealist horror movie set designers. Already gnashing maws of tungsten teeth are ripping up gangly assembler limbs and chemical reactor gizzards to make space for other devices.

It is as much a part of me as my own hands, and all of this activity is as natural as breathing — or perhaps even _thought itself._

I turn my mind towards my available tool set and consider the issue of surgery. Conventionally, I would need to make incisions: she needs artificial knee joints for the cancer and osteoarthritis both. Incisions means bleeding, which means donor blood which needs to be grown — I am not a match for her blood type.

On the other hand, I am not limited to conventional tools. This world has magic — for lack of a better term — and so does my factory. Of particular interest is a sort of effect that lets objects pass through each other with remarkable specificity. Conventionally this might be a thin stick phasing through flesh with which to probe the skeleton, or a blade that phases through all human tissue with which to kill intestinal parasites.

From her blood, I extract a genetic profile, cross-reference to correct for mutagenic damage, and grow a culture of stem cells with plentiful telomeres. In time compression, I prompt them hormonally to develop into osteoblasts, and inject them into a 3D-printed scaffold of dead bone. Within minutes at full compression, I have a replacement lower-half femur.

Adjusting Hanahana’s gurney somewhat, I Let her sit up. A cadre of strong hands gently take hold of her and with a hollow titanium snake tooth, made to phase through flesh, I lay a minimal amount of local anaesthesia around her femur; watching all the while with real time X-ray vision.

Then I use a saw that only touches bone, and two pairs of vise jaws, to hold the bone in place inside her leg, and sever it. With a scalpel-tipped tail, I lay the engraved imbuement directly one the cancerous bone, and as soon as the spell connects, the tendons and ligaments slough off harmlessly.

The bone phases through her flesh not unlike a rock emerging from water, while I open a hard-light — because that is a thing that also exists — prop in the cavity to prevent the tissue from collapsing. I toss the sick bone in a hopper that consumes it, the reverse of my extrusion ability.

Taking the new bone, I reverse the process, and finally join it to the old femur with titanium splits and glue the tendons and ligaments back on with biologically degradable super-strong glue.

So far, Hanahana is taking it with a surprising amount of calm. It occurs to me that she is most likely used to being in a tremendous amount of pain.

Maybe I can do something about that. I’ve been a god for an hour; this is a good time to begin the transhumanist great work. As good as any, really.


	3. Morphological Freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: surgery, medical procedures

It’s like rolling my shoulders to release a kink that’s been bothering me all day. My factory unfolds to a dozen tissue-engineering assembly lines in the span of ten breaths.

Fibroblasts, pure collagen thread, and a thousand sewing-machine spider legs. Flesh-phasing 3D-printers with osteoblast ink. An endless stream of telomerase-boosting designer retroviruses. Muscle fibers stretched out in frames, tendon and ligaments on spools. Cartilage-stem cell slurry and bone marrow running through pipes. Lipocyte cartridges for injection like a reverse liposuction. Lymph nodes like pearls on a string, blood vessels extruded — traditionally, not with my powers — in every size. Nerve fibers for both spine and limb, skin by the metre to wrap it all in, blood to flush her with, and thirty-two new teeth.

Every major organ gets a full replacement: liver, kidneys, heart, spleen, lungs, pancreas, esophagus, gut, colon, bladder, uterus and ovaries. Every gland and nodule, every lump and cluster.

I put Hanahana under, and take her apart like another ship of Theseus. Out goes her battered liver, in goes a new. Out goes her aging heart, in goes a strong, healthy and _young_ copy. I suck each bone dry and fill it with revitalized marrow. Out with the old, in with the new.

Segment by segment I replace her skin, and reweave her subcutaneous connective tissue; carefully re-tattooing the intricate patterns that adorn her.

The brain is the most difficult to repair; a hundred thousand microscopic claws phase through it, excising what little scar tissue is there and injecting cerebrally primed stem cells to fill the gaps in the natural way. The de-aging gene therapy will have to suffice for the rest — and I know it will.

I don’t even notice the sun going down, and then up again.

And then it’s done. I put her in time compression, in a medical coma to let her new body reconnect itself, pumping her full of a custom cocktail of drugs to aid the restoration of function and youth. Her vital signs look incredible.

Behind me, my factory eats itself, leaving barren trampled grass and disturbed soil where temporary foundations were necessary for heavy machinery.

In the end, I ease the compression field and all that’s left is Hanahana on a gurney, catheterized, gavaged, and on a central IV line drip. I remove these last trapping of treatment and give her time to come to on her own.

Her tent has been consumed at some point, since it was in the way.

In the meantime I consider the implication that my factory unfolds from my shadow. It seemed simple at first, but after a long night of concentrating, my fried brain is thinking weird things.

After all, the inside of my body is in constant darkness. It’s difficult, like moving while wrapped tightly in a blanket. Theoretically I could rebuild myself from the inside and out but that will take much too long. I could also do what I did for Hanahana, but it feels as though there is something more appropriate I can do.

Setting my mind to it, I begin unfolding. It’s difficult work, conceptually, since I’m used by this point to just asking for equipment and not caring about anything beyond function; which leads to strange biomechanical designs. This is much more about form.

Carbon-fibre bones and polymer sinew, metal muscle and synthetic viscera; copper nerves and glassy brains; silicone skin and ceramic teeth. Eyes that see infrared and ultraviolet, ears that hear elephants and bats chatter, a nose that puts truffle hogs to shame.

I draw breath in plastic lungs and open artificial eyelids to see my old self in glorious multi-color. Two things strike me; one that this flesh is part of my factory and therefore that I don’t need to cast shadows, and two: that I am seeing both things at once.

A gestalt mind.

«Interesting,» I say in an ambiguous alto that sounds to my other ears exactly like my old voice does in my head.

In the end, I am not much changed, save a discoloration under the skin. But on the other hand as the wind picks up and the sun climbs the sky, I decide to change my hair and it just _does_. I decide to narrow my features to more ambiguous androgyny and they _do._

I slim down, grow to a towering height, and grow an extra set of arms and a third eye. I watch myself from my old frame. Nude, in a body of my own choice and making. Foreign but familiar, with only the remnants of my old self I liked.

Two metres tall, with tan skin and long blue-tinted locks adorning the crown of my head with my temples and neck shaved short, silvery eyes drinking in the world and a smile of perfect pearly teeth behind full lips. I hum a tune with a honeyed voice, and feel my smooth skin. Defined musculature without being manly, curvaceous without being womanly.

It is spiritually arousing, letting my remodeled, vitreous brain flood with simulated chemicals. A loom weaves me an opulent outfit, and gentle hands dress me.

A broad sun hat, knee-high boots, a duster coat, trousers so tight they leave nothing to the imagination, and a loose and flowing button down tucked in, left unbuttoned all the way to the waist.

I am a god. I close the eyes of my old flesh, and lay it to rest; stopping the heart of my mortal remnants and recycling it with care and gentleness. My birth body has served me well so far, but… No more.

I look up at the ultraviolet sky, thinking about color theory with five primary colors, and wait for Hanahana to wake.

Before she does, I have an unethical idea. From thin conductive filament and flexible fiber-optic, I weave a neural lace: a secondary proto-brain made of my own mind-substrate, designed to overlap and join with a human brain. By magic, I non-invasively insert it, phasing the whole oily thing through her hair, scalp, skull, and cortex, slotting the spindly sponge into place within every part of her brain.

I set it to integrate itself, which will take time, and as a first assignment to spy on her language use and keep me posted; with luck I’ll be a fluid speaker before we find her tribesmen.

She wakes, groggy and disoriented from the coma, and I give her a shot to help her find her legs. She swings her feet over the side of the gurney and stands.

It’s by no means a well of youth. She looks like herself, but like a forty-something who lived a life of comfort rather than whatever sixty-something she was before, having lived a life of probably hard labor, substandard healthcare, and exposure to the elements.

She rubs her hair for a little, then bends over and unceremoniously vomits bile and feeding tube slurry on the ground.

Nausea is to be expected. Helpfully I extrude another power bar and a glass of water for her — this time it’s a little more freaky, since the bulb carrying extruding lips emerges from my body, rather than my shadow. It’s fortunately a simple matter to phase it through my clothes.

She takes the bar and greedily scarfs it down, then drinks up and burps heartily. She says something which I don’t understand — an expression confusion, if the lace is to be believed, then looks me up and down. I smile.

She smiles back. Then she stops, looks at her hands and makes fists. She had arthritis before; she’s pain-free now.

She looks down herself, bends her knees, stretches, pirouettes, and makes a few hops, all the while she starts laughing; she attempts to do a cartwheel but falls on her ass, wincing in pain.

It’s cute.

I call out to her: «Hey,» and wave her over. From my looms I draw her a set of clothes, somewhat more resembling what I imagine the rags I found her in once was. A tunic dress, a shawl, and a pair of leggings. Her feet are unaccustomed to hard shoes, so I weave her a pair of socks with kevlar soles. From the surrounding grass, I braid her a hat of straw.

I hand her the outfit and she prostrates herself once more, thanking me. I wince internally. It’s not that I mind, but I am unaccustomed to such displays of reverence, to say the least.

To put my mind to something else, I extrude a silvered mirror for her and begin working on our conveyance.

Ideally, I’d like not to be a complete outside-context problem to her tribe when we find them. Going for a safe bet, I create faux-wood planks from extruded cellulose matrix with lignin and air-bubble filler, and indulge in a little carpentry to make a us a wagon.

It’s not a regular wagon; I am after all a twenty-first century STEM-educated person who watched the Discovery channel as a kid. The front wheels have rack-and-pinion linkage, and the hind wheels a differential; the wagon bed is suspended on springs and the wheels are wood with rubber tyres. There’s a quaint little steering wheel in the coach seat, a rod for thrust, and a pedal for braking. The engine is electric, powered by a solid-state battery of a quality to make Tesla’s R&D blush.

Other than that, it looks like something out of a western; canopy and all.

Hanahana is busy admiring her admittedly shapely behind in the mirror, so I clear my throat and she is quick to get dressed and join me.

I hop up — quite literally — in the coach seat and pat the bench next to me. Hanahana climbs up beside me.

«Where to?» I ask.

She looks at me, uncomprehending. She points forwards at the ground and asks me something, with some bewilderment. I repeat the core word of her query and watch the associations unfold in her brain. Draft animals?

I nudge the thrust control, and the wagon starts gaining speed. Hanahana ’ooh’s, then says something to the effect of it moving on its own.

It’s a fascinating exercise to learn a language by reading thoughts.

The trail left by her tribe isn’t obvious, but I take an educated guess going by the old remains of olfactory trails, and so we begin our journey.


	4. Bearer of Gifts and Receiver of Good Will

With the neural lace, I subtly spur Hanahana into talking. She keeps it up for the remainder of the day while I listen and learn. By nightfall, we make camp. It’s warm in daytime, but it gets cold at night. It’s second nature now to just create whatever materials I need: tarps, mainly, and a gas burner for warmth.

With a meal of warm, fibre-rich, nutritionally complete extrusion-gruel — good for her newly-transplanted gastrointestinal system — Hanahana goes to sleep wrapped in soft blankets. I step outside and manufacture a dozen large helicopter drones, equipped with sensitive infrared eyes and li-dar telemetry. Sending out this small fleet in a search pattern, I say goodbye to the possibility of sleep, and in the small hours of the morning I spot what I assume is the camp of Hanahana’s tribe some sixty kilometers away: a collection of yurts and fenced-in cattle.

The cattle throws me for a loop: there’s some wool-coated beasts I don’t recognize, and what looks like oversized goats behaving like bovines. I spot someone riding what on a good zoom resolves itself as unmistakably a _dinosaur._

Through the morning, I observe their routines, getting a good look at their tents, tools, cattle and horse, and general level of technology. I call the drones back and devour them before someone on the ground spots the sunlight reflected off the optical apertures observing them.

Hanahana stumbles out of the wagon and goes to do her business in the tall grass. I punch a small shovel out of sheet metal, and weave some throwaway tissue, bringing it to her by gangly and hopefully harmless-looking appendage rather than in person.

She comes back thanking me, and asks for breakfast. More power bars, this time with added fiber. She doesn’t mind, but it’s getting same-y to me. Strangely enough I’m _tired_ , which shouldn’t be possible in this body. Perhaps sleep works differently here? A worrying prospect to investigate.

I make my first attempt at conversation. I’ve gleaned enough vocabulary to be reasonably confident of my words. “Your folk, three days, that way.” I point.

She looks at me in surprise. “Your _tribe,_ three day’s travel?”

I nod, and make a walking movement with two fingers across my palm.

“Three day’s walk. My tribe…” She looks in the direction I pointed. She gestures to the wagon and asks me how fast it is.

“Five-and-one days walk, one day,” I reply. She has never actually used the word for six, so I don’t know it.

“Six,” she says, once more expanding my vocabulary.

Before we leave, I prepare gifts. Plain jewelry of precious metals, tools made of good steel, rolls of barbed wire for fences, bolts of strong and soft synthetic fabrics, medicine — broad spectrum antibiotics, antivirals, antiparasitics, antifungals, pesticide soaps, vetenary worm cures, the works — and consumables. Vodka and hard candy will do.

The trip takes only four hours, pushing the small engine to the limits of its ability; and I am thankful for the mostly flat terrain. Hanahana goes over some vocabulary in a more structured manner — numbers, cardinal directions, body parts. I supply visual aides for basic shapes and various common objects on a screen of bioluminescent octopus-skin.

We reach their camp slightly after mid-day. The cattle are all out grazing — I observed the cattle herders departing early in the morning — leaving the camp populated by homemakers, craftsmen, and children.

Our conveyance draws stares, even though what I’m seeing is some weird hybrid culture. Particularly, I’m puzzled by the barbed wire fences.

The playing children run to fetch adults, and Hanahana hops down from the wagon, heading for the middle of the camp. “Stay here,” she says. I watch her walk away, and she ducks into one of the bigger yurts.

It’s not very long before one of the courageous kids come up to me, four arms and three eyes and all.

It’s a little tanned boy with curly hair, snot running from his nose and dust on every visible square centimetre of skin and tunic.

“Who’re you?” he asks.

“I’m Takall,” I say.

He wipes his nose in his wrist.

Then someone yells his name — Masa — and I see a woman come running up to us, looking unnerved and torn between keeping an eye on her son, and being vary of me.

She wraps him up in her arms and brings herself between him and me. “I’m very sorry for my son, please forgive him.”

I hold up a hand and smile. “He is very good,” I say, “very good boy.” I want to say something more eloquent, but I simply do not have the vocabulary.

She bows and says something I don’t understand, before ducking away.

There’s a gathering of less-courageous children, hiding behind things and looking from a distance. Soon enough, Hanahana returns, followed by a gruff-looking man with a clear air of authority and family resemblance, a woman who give every appearance of being Hanahana’s replacement, and two other men who also look important.

I wave and smile, and I’m somewhat relieved to have my quote-unquote translator back.

“So this is he?” Hanahana’s relative says. Her son, perhaps?

“This is Takall, god of flesh and metal, giver of youth, master of all crafts and medicines. Summoned here by I, Hanahana, daughter of Annanna, daughter of Penna, daughter of Ananu.”

“Hi,” I say.

The man I assume to be the chief speaks up: “I am Inar, son of Hanahana, leader of this tribe. This is our healer Palanaswe, daughter of Kanakana, daugter of Penna. These are Tatkapu and Zidanta, heads of their respective families.”

Inar is vital for his middle age, with greying beard and hair, dressed in neat shirt and breeches. Palanaswe is younger, wearing a stained apron. Tatkapu is older, wiry, thin, bald, and leaning on a cane, Zidanta is about Inar’s age and of similar build, but has vitiligo.

“Nice to meet you,” I say.

Inar bows. “Forgive me, o goddess, but to us your presence does not bode joy.”

“That’s no… Insult for me,” I say. “You did not —” I want to say ‘invite’ “— ask for me to come. I did not ask to come.”

Hanahana smiles smugly. “To think you doubted your own mother,” she says to Inar.

He turns to her. “Mother; you have brought great peril on us with your hubris. Who knows what other gods may know of this? We could all be killed or worse! I should cast you into exile.”

Hanahana frowns. “You would _cast into exile_ your own _mother?_ Disgraceful.”

“Hanahana, shut up,” I say.

She looks up at me, surprised.

I hop down from the wagon, and step up to Inar. Then I fall onto one knee.

“I am… Sad,” I say. “You could all be killed, just for me coming here. I do not want that.” I stand up. “If you are in peril, we will leave at once. I bring gifts, but I can make it… look bad instead —” I grasp for the words “— play at _being_ peril. Play that you hate me? Yes?”

Inar tilts his head. “I don’t understand?”

Hanahana looks to me. “… Tackle suggests he pretends to menace us, so it would seem we are not affiliated.”

I nod.

Inar contemplates, then turns to Tatkapu and Zidanta. “What do you think?”

Tatkapu holds up his hand. “We will do nothing of the sort. You will enjoy our hospitality, we will receive your gifts, and we will part ways. One does not meddle in the affairs of gods. The Lady Tyrant is as wise as she is cruel; she will see through a ruse.”

I breathe a sigh of relief internally. Admittedly it was a bad plan, hastily made.

Inar calls together the present adults, and we unload the gifts. I direct Hanahana to stick to my side and keep quiet which seems to amuse Inar.

There is a marveling murmur as my high quality tools are inspected and tested; the fabrics inspected and touched; the alcohol tasted.

“This is very generous,” Inar notes, holding a knife of my making.

“It is nothing,” I say. “I am a god, master craftsman. Very generous to you, nothing to me. I will show Palanaswe how the medicines work.”

“Thank you.” Inar turns to the group of adults and children currently going through the small crates of gifts. “The goddess Takall is a friend of our tribe. Treat her with hospitality and respect,” he announces to the crowd.

The next half hour turns to chaos, as the children warm up to me — helped along by the candy — and bobmard me with questions, most of which I can’t answer. Yes, I can see with my third eye, yes, my lower arms are just as strong, no, that does not make me twice as strong since you lift with your legs. And so on.

The silly questions culminate when Zidanta approaches me: “I must ask, are you a man or a woman?”

“I am a god,” I say with an enigmatic smile. “Are you unmarried?”

“No, I am married.”

“Then; does it matter?” I shoot back.

He frowns, thoughtfully.

A young woman approaches me in the midst of the bustle. “Goddess?”

“Yes?”

She looks hopeful, scared — no; worried. “My husband is dying. Please, can you heal him?”


	5. The Higher One Soars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: surgery, medical procedures

I look to Palanaswe, who is inspecting the capsules in the medicine bottles. She looks up at the mention, and locks eyes with me.

“Show me,” I say.

She leads me to a small yurt at the edge of camp — Hanahana follows on my heels — and inside. Lying on the bed-rolls is a pale young man, drenched in sweat.

I kneel at his side and begins diagnosing him. He’s running a high fever, and is unresponsive. His jaw clenches and he twitches, and I turn over his bandaged hand, unwrapping the cloth bandage and finding an infected wound in his palm.

“How?” I ask, pointing to it.

“He cut himself.”

“What knife?” I ask.

She hands me a blade with notable rust. The diagnosis is clear and grave: Tetanus.

“I will do what I can,” I say. “It may look scary.”

I begin unfolding and extruding medical equipment. The young woman gasps, but Hanahana holds her and says something comforting. The yurt is too small for a production line for tetanus immunoglobulin. I put a proboscis catheter in a large vein and give him anticonvulsants, broad-spectrum antibiotics and maintenance fluids.

Working quickly, I catherterize him, and clean his waste; sterilize his hand and arm and cut away the infected tissue, leaving his hand somewhat diminished.

My unfolding exits the yurt — as does Hanahana and the woman — and I begin setting up a production line for replacement tissue and immunoglobulin; both for the bacterium, but also for the tetanus toxin itself.

Within minutes I’m flooding him with custom-made antibodies in flesh-phasing needles and restoring the full use of his hand with stem-cell grown replacement flesh. His condition is now improving by the minute, and I begin dismantling the assembly line that circles the yurt.

“Hanahana!” I call.

She comes in with the woman, who runs to his side.

“He will be better now.”

“Thank you, goddess,” she says, looking up from stroking his forehead.

Hanahana comes up beside me, and even as I expect her to put a hand on my arm or say something, she doesn’t. Reverence, not pride and recognition.

Inar peeks cautiously inside. “Arala, what was all that?”

“The goddess saved Hati,” the woman says.

“ _Permission to speak?_ ” Hanahana whispers.

I nod.

She turns to Inar. “Takall’s power manifests as strange flesh and metal growing and moving to create things. It looks frightening, but it is not dangerous.”

Palanaswe comes in and heads to Hati’s side, inspecting his reconstructed palm and taking his temperature with a steady hand.

I turn and head back out to find a crowd of quiet people looking on in awe. It irks me. I still smile and wave, manifesting a bouquet of spindly tool-bearing limbs from my arm for show. “Sorry. It is scary, I know. I had to heal Hati, and had no time.”

A strange ennui and exhaustion comes over me, and I shamble through the crowd of people reverently reaching out to touch my hands. Hanahana follows after. I reach the edge of camp where the wagon is parked, and I begin constructing my own yurt.

“What’s wrong?” Hanahana asks.

“I’m… Tired. It should not be possible.”

She shrugs. “Everybody needs to sleep sometimes?”

I shake my head. “I am a god.”

“It is still early; shall I come wake you in the evening? They are making a feast in your honor.”

The yurt closes in around us. I lift the two of us with gentle hands as my myriad of tool-bearing pseudopods lay a faux-wood floor under our feet.

“… Is something the matter, my god?”

I don’t answer.

“Takall?” she insists.

I sit down cross-legged on the bare floor, even as furnishings arrive — stools, table, beddings. I nod, and a lump catches in my throat.

Hanahana kneels down beside, hesitantly.

“It’s just—” I don’t have the word; instead I reach out and touch Hanahana’s temple and through the neural lace evoke _homesickness_. “What is that feeling called?”

She touches her temple “You’re homesick?”

I nod, and I take a deep breath. I want to cry. I want my bed and my wife and my kids and my shitty fifth-floor flat’s inner-city view. “I have children, at home… Hanahana, am I ever going to see them again?”

She sits down, and looks away. “I… I don’t know. I have never heard of it. I have never found a story in the dreaming where a god went home; not a true one. My grandmother never told me of anything like it.”

“Haven’t you ever —” It occurs to me that I don’t know the word for ‘read’, nor does it seem like Hanahana’s people are literate in any way. “— Never mind.” I almost chuckle.

I don’t know if there’s hope I’ll ever make it home. Earth could use someone like the me I am now. At least, if ‘twinning’ means what I think it means, I can take solace in the fact that they aren’t bereft of me at home.

From Hanahana’s statement it seems either impossible or at the very least incredibly rare and/or difficult; and by the law of averages, I shouldn’t expect myself to be an exception to that rule.

It hurts. It hurts that I never got to wake up with my two little munchkins and have breakfast, and wake up my wife so she could kiss them goodbye before sending them off to daycare.

Hanahana prostrates herself. “Forgive me, my god. I brought you here. I was selfish when I didn’t consider that you would miss your home. Take whatever revenge you see fit on me.”

My anger well up. “Stand.”

She quickly gets to her feet, and pales when she sees the look on my face.

“Don’t ever invite me to take revenge on you for slights you have done against me, ever again,” I snap. “I am not a cruel god, and I am insulted that you think so after all the kindness I have given you, and the humility I have shown your son.”

“Yes, my god,” she says, and looks down.

I look away. “Forgive me; my sadness turned to anger.”

“I forgive you, and I am sorry for insulting you.” She goes down on her knees again, and prostrates herself. “I should have know your kindness better.”

“Don’t do that. Laying down. It is strange to me.”

She sits back up on her knees. “Forgive me.”

“I don’t like reverence and worship. Until you called me here, I was just a person, like you.” I look down at my feet, and two sets of folded hands in my lap.

Then Hanahana leans in and pulls me into a hug.

I reciprocate and hold her close with all arms, and realize just how little human contact I’ve had for three days. And even though my new body is built out of literal divine machinery, perhaps standing around in open steppe for two nights in a row has taken its toll on my mind, which is still very much that of a thirty-year-old human.

We separate and she lets herself sit next to me.

“Thank you,” I say.

She puts a hand on my lower shoulder. “Forgive me if I was too forward; you looked so very lonely.”

“I am.”

“If you wish, I’ll stay with you; if you need to talk.”

I shake my head. “Go be with your kin. I’ll go to sleep.”

She gives my arm a squeeze and rises. “Sleep well, dream safe,” she says before ducking out past the entry tarp.

I pull off my knee-length boots, wiggle out of my trousers, and cast aside the button-down. My bed is made in soft artificial silk, and I think for a spell about personal security as I rest my head. But no; I am quite probably safe here.


	6. Banquet in Your Honor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: alcohol

I awaken with a jolt to a splitting headache and then, visions. A feeling of dread and discontinuity alerts me to memory tampering, and the fail-safes in my mind begins playing back what was attempted erased, reconstructing events from the compressed backup of my stream of consciousness I didn’t even know existed, but which has been recorded in the depths of my brain exactly for eventualities like this.

The man is not a man; he is a toad in a suit. He looks at me with slit pupils in dichromatic irises and grins a smile of off-white narrow teeth, and his skin glistens dark grey-green.

_I was wondering when you would be getting some shut-eye._

I tense, and note how it feels like a nightmare. Who is he?

_A god, like you. One who likes to stay on top of things. A new player on the board can break the stalemates._

We are nothing alike.

_We are more alike than you might think. It’s foolish to sleep unprotected, so ask that pet shaman of yours for a talisman. Not that it will help._

That’s a really villainous thing to say; as is dressing in black formal dress and contacting people in their dreams.

_I never once claimed to be your ally, nor do I want to be._

So why are you chatting me up?

_So you’ll give your strengths and weaknesses away; but I feel you’re mightily defensive, so… You won’t remember any of this._

I rub my temple and will the pain away. My REM sleep was interrupted quite rudely by this toad-man. The dark corners of my mind percolate with retorts and revenge.

It occurs to me that I _already know_ what constitutes protection from dream trespassing. I already know a _lot_ of stuff, and the more I find out I already know, the more it becomes clear it’s part of my godhood.

Shamanic abilities are based on sympathy, and nowhere is sympathy stronger than in the mind; and that is in broad terms how it _almost_ overlaps with more overt sorcery.

What is necessary to protect myself in dreams is therefore something that is either a barrier of _like_ , or a barrier of _unlike._ Unlike would be a helmet of lead, or a circle of hot coals.

But _like_ is much more difficult to conjure and more powerful in return. Unfolding the solution akin to how I did when I created my body, I weave a night cap of fiber optical brain tissue. In it, I create an absence of intellect. A thought process that thinks of _Mā_ , a dream of not-even-black not-even-silence. Sensory deprivation; ambient noise _at best._

Slipping it over my head like a cap, I lie down and quickly fall asleep once more.

_What is flesh but a fine lace of intricate mechanisms? What is an engine but a primitive muscle strand?_

I feel it churn, I feel myself in the machinery. And then there is space to think half-formed thoughts.

_I’m dreaming._

And then I wake up, a gentle hand on mine.

“Takall.”

I open three eyes and see Hanahana kneeling next to my bedroll.

“What is it?”

“There’s a feast in your honor, my god.”

I nod, and sit up.

“Can I ask,” Hanahana says. “When I summoned you, you were male; why the change to female?”

I look down at my chest and torso. I’m ambiguously busty and slim-waisted, complicated by my twin pairs of pecs to support two sets of arms.

I snicker. “I’m a god, Hanahana, not a woman.” I throw aside the covers, revealing myself to be as gendered as a ken doll; albeit with a small slit that conceals a urethra. Gods still need to piss, apparently.

She blushes with remarkable composure. I grin and reach for my shirt and pants, and she speaks not one word until we reach the open space at the center of the camp. The sun hangs low in the sky.

I’ve watched my share of movies that represented tribal society with more or less racism, and so I know what to expect: a big bonfire in the middle and all. Instead the feast is essentially a picnic gathering of groups clustered around small firepits and braziers. Every single fire is a ‘Swedish’ log torch, presumably to get the most out of the firewood they have to lug around on their wagons.

They are also a connected people; apart from what I’ve brought in gifts, there’s several things I’ve spotted that must have come from trade. Their production seems to be mostly wool, from those sheep-like things; while the large goats may be a source of milk, the lack of refrigeration and facilities for cheese making makes it difficult to do anything other than consume it as is.

They have metals and a substantial amount of wood despite not a single tree being visible on the horizon, at the same time I’ve seen tools made of bone.

We’re invited to sit with Inar, his wife and kids, and Palanaswe. I’m treated to a variety of dried and marinated meats, dried fruit and pickles, as well as water and milk to drink, aside from the spirits I’ve brought.

Music fills the night whenever song breaks out, or one one occasion when some talented person plays a flute piece two fires over.

It’s cozy. Intimate. After assuring people that I’m not to be revered or respected differently than any other guest, I shut up for most of the evening — partly because my grasp of the language is still lacking.

Hanahana and Inar bicker and rib each other like proper family. Her adolescent grandchildren are curious about me only until they decide I am just another adult, interested in boring adult conversation.

“Lord Takall,” Inar’s wife Tunnawiya says, “if I may; what is the Far Plane like?”

Hanahana looks to me, with curiosity.

“It’s not really one place,” I say. “It’s a whole world. My home was in a big city. I earned my money by… How do you say… When words are seen, not heard? And counting — it’s difficult to explain.”

“You were a merchant? Scribe?” Tunnawiya asks.

“What is the word for when a merchant counts many things together?” I attempt.

“Sums? Arithmetic?” Hanahana supplies.

I frown. “What do you call a complex tool with many pieces?”

“Like… a mechanism? You were an clocksmith?” Inar asks.

“We have mechanisms that do arithmetic,” I explain. “I was a scribe of… The orders one gives to such mechanisms, to make them sum the right quantities.”

Inar scoffs but smiles. “So a scribe that commands clockwork merchants. Sounds like you led a pampered life of wealth and splendor. Is it a shock to see how we live?”

I shake my head. "I was not wealthy. A scholar, yes, but scholars there are so common that many are poor. Your lives are much happier. You have the sky, the open land, and each other… The city I lived in was so big and lit with so many fires it drowned out the stars at night…

“Still, it was my home,” I finish. “I had a family there. I miss it.”

I take my cup and take a swig of vodka.

“You seem very wise,” Tunnawiya says.

“I am a scholar,” I point out.

Hanahana straightens somewhat. “I sought out a wise, kind, and humble soul to bring here. So far, I have not been disappointed.”

“You flatter me, dear summoner,” I shoot back.

There’s a murmur in the crowd and I look at the source to see the woman I visited earlier, supporting her husband by the arm. They are heading past the sitting people, towards us.

“Arala!” Palanaswe says, standing. “Hati!”

I stay seated, and they approach, stopping within polite distance of me.

“Lord Takall,” Hati says, his voice weak, “You saved my life.” He keels. “Thank you for saving my Arala the grief of losing me.” Then he prostrates himself to me.

I wince. “Hati,” I say. He looks up at me. “If you wish to thank me: eat, rest, and cherish your wife. I want no other worship or prostration.”

Arala helps him to his feet. “Of course, yes. I just—”

“Eat, rest, cherish,” I repeat, counting them out on my fingers. I raise my cup with another hand, then realize the message I am sending. “Oh— don’t drink any spirits tonight. You’re too weak for it still. Water and milk only.”

He nods, and they head back the way the came.


	7. Mental Integrity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: allusions to drug use

It grows late, and people trickle away from the festivities.

Tunnawiya take the kids to bed. Hanahana, Inar and Palanaswe start talking about old times.

I excuse myself, and head back to my Yurt to get some more sleep. I’ve not even reached my yurt at the edge of camp before Hanahana catches up.

“Hey,” I say.

“You ate my tent, if I recall,” she says, with playful accusation, “and my worldly possessions were distributed when they assumed me dead.”

“Yeah, I imagined as much. You’re welcome to sleep in my yurt,” I say.

Hanahana snickers, and I get the distinct impression I’ve committed a faux pas. “Did I say something wrong?”

“A man inviting a woman to sleep in his yurt is a gesture of courtship,” she says, giggling. She steps towards me, inside my personal space. “I know you don’t know our customs, and didn’t mean it so, but…”

“I’m not a man exactly, and you’re drunk,” I say. “I’m drunk. Let me make you a bed.”

I weave another luxurious bedroll arrangement in a matter of minutes; a soft mattress, a thick comforter, silky sheets. Inside the yurt I light the hydrogen-oxygen burner I’ve installed in lieu of a stove or fire pit. It provides a soft glow and more than adequate warmth, with no danger of a carbon dioxide buildup.

Hanahana undresses, and even though I _built_ the flesh she inhabits, it has a different context now, and I find myself averting my gaze until she slips under her covers. Realizing that we’re in sore need of some privacy, I weave a sheet to hang from the roof poles. As I hang it and undress, I hear Hanahana give a little sigh of disappointment.

I strip down, slip under my own luxuriously covers, and slip on my new sleeping cap.

“You are boring,” Hanahana complains.

“What is it with you?” I ask, mildly annoyed. “I thought we were cultivating a— a friendship; that you were my most loyal follower. Something other than flirting!” _I’m married,_ I almost add.

She huffs from the other side of the sheet separating us. “You gave me my youth back, you’re prancing around being literally deifically handsome, and we’re together all the time. My husband died eight years ago and my bed has been empty for that long. That’s what is with me.”

With a thought, I reach into her neural lace and extinguish her desire to jump my bones. Then I turn over and go to sleep.

Closeness, the smell of skin, the taste of lips, intoxicating undulating motion, raw lust.

Something in the back of my mind tells me these feelings originate from without, and then I gain lucidity and recall that I am sleeping in a cap that should make it near impossible to influence my dreams.

_You did?_

Did what?

_Then how come I can even be in your dream?_

Hanahana. Her limbs are intertwined with mine; we embrace passionately.

I push her away. There’s only one feasible explanation: her neural lace forms a sympathetic connection to my mind.

_Did… Did you put something_ inside _my head?_

I show her my memory of implanting her neural lace, and how it helped me learn the language. I’m sorry.

_What?_

She doesn’t understand the significance, but it was very unethical of me to put it there; a gross violation of mental privacy, and one which I have abused on several occasions already to manipulate her emotions.

_Oh. I—_

_I don’t know how to feel about that._

Well, I don’t know how to feel about her invading my dream and evoking erotic imagery. Turning off her arousal was evidently not enough.

Hanahana flees, and I follow. There’s a tremendous resistance and then suddenly we’re in a comfortable, expansive yurt full of memory and dreams.

She sits by the great brazier full of blue fire, hair white as silver, nude and in-between old as I found her, and young as I made her; even as I look she ages in reverse.

I drape myself in a genderless, sexless, doll-form to put sexual notions out of the question.

_You followed me,_ she says with a mixture of reverence and a sour tone.

I did?

_Unwise. You’re at my mercy here in my dreamscape._

You’re forgetting I am a god, and that I have a hold on your mind.

She deflates, and the fire diminishes. Fear. _Please; I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to defy you so._

I sit beside her, and put an arm around her. I am not cruel. I’m sorry for making threatening implications.

She looks at me. _You’re such a strange one._

What do you mean?

_You’re… Stuck. In the past, in the Far Plane. You’re desperately holding on to the hope that you can go back. I know it hasn’t been long and you’re still coming to terms with it._

_But konw this: I_ twinned _you. There is nothing to go back to, for you are already there. And here. All at once._

I want to say I never asked her to. I was happy, but found reality unfulfilling. Now it’s vice-versa.

_I’m sorry. It’s causing you such grief and the fact that I did it is killing me. I wish I could distract you._

How do you know this?

_I was just in your head. You’re not good at concealing things; not yet._

I snicker. I still want to go back, though. Maybe I could save the world.

_Well… Maybe. But it shouldn’t be a hope you cling to. You should make a life for yourself here._

I shrug.

_And if you_ want _to—_

I’m going to introduce you to sex toys so you’ll leave me alone. Well, assuming…

_Assuming what?_

I’m not going to stay here. It’s not that I have anything against your tribe, but I don’t want them to become dependent on me.

_And you want to adventure._

I want to find out what the world is like, how it is broken, and how to fix it. Adventuring is a means, not an end.

_I was never not going to follow you to the ends of Vegatia. I_ summoned _you._

The blue fire swells, and I give her hand a squeeze. I’ll be happy to have her.

I wake before sunrise, and reshape my body towards femininity: more bust, less jawline. I shrink myself by a few fractions, smoothing out muscle definition. My lips turn colors and my hair flows long and luscious. I slip on my shirt and trousers and step outside in the dewy steppe grass barefoot.

I unfold a little production. I conjure a suite of hand tools and a work station, extrude raw materials and prefab parts, and get to work.

When the sun rises, I’ve sculpted, soldered, and cast from finest silicone, an entire array of sex toys. From a gentle bullet vibrators to magic wand powered by a kilogram of solid state battery; tasteful artsy dildos over realistic ones to anatomically optimized implements of stimulation. The only reason I haven’t made a full-blown Sybian saddle is due to the constraining size of the chest I’m putting them all in.

With my remaining time alone in the wee hours, I being loading and modifying our wagon. By the time Hanahana wakes up, the only thing left is the yurt.

She comes out, finding me sitting on top of our wagon — no longer covered in tarp and canvas, but now a proper caravan with faux-wooden walled living space, metal-spoked wheels, proper suspension, a more powerful motor, and a trailer for luggage and latrine.

It is loaded with the first generation of my time-compressed hydroponics and cultured meat. Dried grains, legumes, and fruits — or analogues thereof, I don’t recognize any of the local cultivars — and smoked jerky of whatever those oversized goats are; _Odzen_ , they are called.

For myself, I’m smoking a pipe. All manners of psychoactive substances are only as effective as I permit them to be since my brain is made of fiber-optics, and my lungs can function when the air is more soot than air. Today, only nicotine.

“Good morrow,” she says.

“I’m thinking we should leave before noon,” I say. “You should say your goodbyes.”


	8. Breaktime Preparations for Travel and Trouble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CW: mind reading, masturbation, firearms

I dismantle the now vacant yurt with a hundred hands and load it up in the trailer.

There’s nary a tearful goodbye, but then again most of Hanahana’s tribe had already said theirs and come to terms with the absence of their aging shaman. I sit there, aloft, smoking a glass pipe.

I don’t smoke, and I don’t recommend it nor endorse it, but without mortal lungs, it does seem like a cool thing to do right now. Arala and Hati come by to thank me one last time. She’s expecting. They are going to name their child after me. I give them my blessings with a smile.

Palanaswe comes by and we chat briefly about medicine. She knows most of what she can act on: boiling surgical tools and bandages to sterilize them, using reduced cattle urine as a disinfectant. Her knowledge of medical herbs outstrips mine, but then that is also without the purview of my divine knowledge.

Hanahana comes back.

“Are you ready to go?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she replies.

I take the seat behind the wheel, and she climbs in next to me. We strap in, I turn up the power, and we begin accelerating.

“Where are we going, now?” Hanahana asks, as the camp disappears behind us.

“First, far enough away that I can build something big,” I say.

The sun climbs, and our electric wagon eats up the steppe lands. Hanahana relishes the speed, and it occurs that I still don’t know how their timekeeping conventions are put together.

We make a stop, and Hanahana climbs the ladder to the roof to eat a fibre-fortified power-bar and enjoy the view.

I begin unfolding a rather large production line: I need a good bit of electronics for this, as well as a launchpad.

I need a heading; I need to _know_ what sort of place Vegatia is. That means another drone fleet, and — part of me is irrationally excited at the prospect — a _suborbital rocket launch._ I’m building larger drones with powerful telemetry, and ultra-high-definition cameras, as well as the computational infrastructure to support that. That is the bulk of my production line’s complexity. In the end it’s easier to just outfit them with a little shard of my vitreous brain substrate — a little shard of myself — than to program them.

“So, what is this?” Hanahana asks.

I put the rotors on the first large quad copter with suction cup impact wrenches and steel toothed mandibles. It takes off with a roar.

“I’m figuring out where we’re going,” I say. “These… spiral-fliers, will help.”

(Helicopter: lat. _Helico-_ spiral, _-pter_ flight.)

Hanahana looks after the aircraft. “You can see what it sees?”

“Yeah.”

The second one takes off, in a different cardinal direction. Then another, and another.

I begin putting together a suite of meteorological and astronomical measurement instruments and install them in a small solid-fueled rocket, a ten metre tall tube of explosively volatile nitrogen chemistry passing for a suborbital vehicle. I erect a polymer blast shield to protect us from the launch, even as I have placed it away in the middle distance. Not that anything is going to go wrong, but _just_ in _case._

Strolling back to the wagon, I leap halfway up the ladder on the side.

“Watch here,” I say, sitting down next to her.

With a mental order, the rocket takes off with a deafening roar, smokelessly and only the slightest flame trail. Hanahana almost falls over backwards in surprise. I laugh, and data begins trickling in.

Laughter dies in my mouth, as numbers and video flash by my inner eye.

Vegatia is not flat. Barely. The radius of this world is one hundred and thirteen thousand kilometers. Whatever is inside this world, it is by necessity mostly empty space or it would be a small star. Speaking of stars, how the mostly sol-like star hasn’t torn this bubble world into pieces is but one of a growing list of mysteries.

“What is it?”

“Vegatia has three hundred an twenty times more land Far Plane,” I mutter. “As far as I used to understand, it shouldn’t — _can’t_ — exist. But it does.”

“I don’t even know what that means — what was that thing that flew up into the sky?”

Shaking the magnitude shock off, I extrude some sulfur-carbon-potassium nitrate granulate mix — chemically pure black powder — in my hand.

“This is a powder that burns with vigor,” I say, and put it in a small brazier. With a bioluminescent diode laser, I ignite it and it goes up in flames with a rather loud _woosh_.

Next I make a flimsy, sealed cellulose-cardboard cup with a measure of black powder in it and seal it with a fuse in while Hanahana watches. “When the fire has nowhere to go, it gets… Angry.” I ignite the fuse and toss it on the ground below, where it detonates with a crack.

Next I make a genuine pyrotechnic rocket. I show how it is open in one end, prop it up at an angle on the roof, and light the fuse. It flies off with a _woosh_. “If the fire can only go out one end, it pushes the rest in the opposite direction.”

“So what just flew up was a bigger version of that?”

“Same base principle, yes.”

My drones are chugging away at well over two hundred kilometres per hour, but it could be a long time before they find anything.

I take this time to hop down and enter the wagon, and find the box of sex toys I made for Hanahana. I still feel her amorous inclination through the neural lace. This will probably only exacerbate the problem. I should probably excise her feelings with the lace, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind much.

But perhaps I’m using the ethics as an excuse. Once I would have said to myself that I should realize what emotional state I would end up in, and then cut to the chase and just change my mind, but I’ve since come to appreciate how it preserves sanity to actually go through the motions of emotional revelation.

I shove this thought aside for the present, bringing the box up to the roof.

“What’s this?” she asks.

I open it, and presents her with the small array of sex toys. She picks up the most realistic-looking dildo. “Are you joking?” she says with a giggle.

“I am entirely serious. These are the finest tools of women’s self-pleasuring known in the Far Plane.”

She picks up a beautiful curved vibrator and inspects it. I reach over and click it to start it. “If you’re up for it, you’re welcome to try them out.”

She takes the clear plastic bottle of personal lubricant in the box. “And this?” I open the cap and squirt some on her finger.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” I say, and reach into her neural lace to subtly push her arousal up.

I hop down from the wagon roof and stroll away to give her some privacy.

For myself, I turn my mind to self defense, and begin setting up a gun-smithing workshop.

I’m still in the dark about the overall level of technology. The wagon is not an outside-context problem, at least if it isn’t closely inspected. Guns are probably okay too, but I don’t know to what extent. Automatic assault rifles and semiautomatic magazine-fed hand guns are probably out.

To my joy, I can mass produce ammunition with speed and ease, enough to circumvent all concerns of economizing it in the heat of battle — with some concentration I can extrude entire cartridges in the palm of my hand. I begin a similar hands-on construction experience as earlier, at least insofar as assembling the gun parts produced by my unfolded machinery.

In the back of my mind I note Hanahana having driven herself to an orgasm; no doubt the first of many.

I design a beautiful bolt-action rifle chambering a powerful mid-calibre cartridge stored in an internal box magazine, with stripper-clip reloading.

Adding to that, a robust break-action revolver with a small caliber, a short double-barreled shotgun with a night-obscene bore and last, I design and assemble a water-cooled machine gun chambered in a heavy caliber, belt fed.

At a distance, one of my unfolded many-jointed arms set up ceramic targets, and I take each weapon for a spin in turn. Augmented by my enhanced body and senses, my aim is nigh perfect, but I feel I need more structured practice before — hopefully never — entering my first gunfight. Aiming is not an automatic action; it’s an adaptation of tangentially related superpowers; a hack.

Satisfied with a good hours work, I craft a few melee weapons: karambits and stilettos, clubs of simple faux-wood, rubber saps filled with lead pellets, and knuckle dusters.

I pack it all up in boxes for transport, and head back, already unfolding tools to set up a bathtub for Hanahana to take a nice post-masturbatory soak.

That’s when I get my first ping from the drones — a populated trade road to the east — and knock on the door to the wagon’s sole internal room.

Hanahana opens, looking rumpled and happy, holding her tunic in front of her for modesty.

“A bath?” I ask.

“Yes please.”

I gesture towards the tub. “Please, don’t take too long. I’ve found where we’re heading.”

She nods and trots off to get clean. I peak my head inside to see her bed unmade. I smile to myself, feeling a little titillating whiff of something like compersion.


	9. Passion and Privileges of Objects of Worship

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: self-surgery, penetrative sex
> 
> The following sex scene contains plot-relevant developments; skip it only if you find such things distasteful.

It’s a three-and-a-half day drive cross-country. It would be mind-numbingly boring, if not for Hanahana’s talent at filling the time with engaging storytelling. I quietly thank the universe for oral tradition; hours of stories barely scratch the surface of the mythology of her people.

She tells me tales of her distant ancestors and how they became herders of cattle, of why the grass is green in spring and yellow in summer, of ancient gods and their exploits, of long-past wars and politics in distant lands.

I teach her in turn about the wonders of the hygeine standards of the Far Plane.

“Can I ask you something?” Hanahana says on the second day in the midst of the tedium of steppelands rolling by. There’s _maybe_ some mountains on the horizon, so desperately atmospherically tinted by this insane planet’s size that they might as well be just the sky. To me, the air itself is tinted ultraviolet even at short distances, but further away, there is still bluishness to contend with.

I nod. “You may ask.”

“The night before we left my tribe, we had that… Conversation, in our dreams, and the morning after I noticed you were a lot more feminine. Why?”

“Because I thought women weren’t in your tastes.”

She sits a little, chewing on it. “I don’t think they are not.”

I almost sigh.

“Look, when you gave me those instruments, and I… Pleasured myself, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I haven’t been able to stop ever since. And I am not going to pretend to not know what that means.”

“Hanahana—” I say.

“Takall, whether you want it or not, I’ve fallen in love with you.”

I groan.

“Don’t you pretend like you’re not reciprocating my feelings,” she accuses. “I’m in your dreams every night. You _desire_ me.”

She’s right. “Hana,” I say.

She blushes slightly. “Yes?”

“Wait, was that another faux-pas?”

She takes a deep breath. “It’s just— shortening names are usually a sign of intimacy…”

I rub the bridge of my nose. “Hana, I’m flattered, I really am. But I am a god, and you are my summoner and follower. And you are at least twice as old as I am. Old enough to be my mother.”

“I don’t feel old anymore.”

I look at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I feel young; in my mind. Like I was never an old, frail, sick woman about to die in the first place. It’s quite wonderful.” She smiles. “I’m thankful.”

A concrete data-point against the hypothesis of ‘mental age.’ Interesting. “Still, there’s power imbalances both ways,” I continue. “And I’m not sure I am ready for a relationship.”

She scoffs. “You’re just making objections now. We had this conversation already. You’re stuck in the past, and you’re on an adventure to change that — this is an opportunity to pursue just that! Why are you so reluctant to just admit the truth of your feelings?”

I sight.

“I am throwing myself at you, _Tack._ Don’t play this out with drama we both know is unneeded. Don’t break both your heart and mine.”

I look down. “You know it’s just a few days since I went to sleep beside my wife, right? As much as I am a fan of casual sex, this is all overwhelming; I need time to mourn the love of my life — my old life — whom I will never see again.”

She turns away, and the conversation falls apart. We don’t exchange another word of consequence until night has fallen. We eat dinner in silence, and go to bed without so much as a ‘good night.’

Two hours pass, while sleep eludes me, and I pass the time trying to distract myself with design tasks, while trying to keep Hana — her words and her body — off my mind.

_Maybe I should just give in. Maybe I will._

I get out of bed; I’m sleeping in the lower bunk; above me, Hanahana slumbers.

I step outside for some air, and consider what I should do about it. Traveling together in a small caravan has lent itself to some necessary moments of intimacy; it hasn’t always been entirely possible to undress in private, for instance.

She’s gorgeous. There’s no denying it. The perfect mix of the signs of age and dignity, and the power and vigor of youth underneath. A real cougar-chaser’s dream. She’s also head-over-heels into me, loyal, kind, wise, and bratty at times.

I’ve full access to the entirety of my mind. I grasp the knot of conflicting emotions that tie my thoughts like shackles, and with a metaphorical hand, I untie it. Wonderfully direct self-directed psychotherapy. Terrifyingly powerful, unimaginably dangerous. Rash, even.

A lightness comes over me as my emotional turmoil resolves itself at once.

My heart beats faster, and I cast open my silk robe and unfold a suite of machinery in front of me. Painlessly, I perform an impossibly intricate act of transplantive surgery on myself. A deep cutaway, spilling my strangely-colored blood on the ground, removing inert flesh to make room.

I endow myself with a set of synthetic glands of a size and capacity that would be more at home on something with six times my body mass; and a long, thick, smooth, delectably soft member over a tight pouch. There is no recovery needed; my artificial flesh is designed to be ameliorable to surgery — joined wound to wound heals in second.

Within moments of it connecting to my circulatory and nervous systems, my cock begins rising, and I run a hand over its length. It feels _divine,_ and my mind is flooded with sensation and desire.

It does it feel liberating to have a physical outlet for my neglected sex drive. If Hana feels envigorated in her regained youth; it is nothing beside the sheer euphoria I feel over my current freedom from predetermined form.

Throwing my robe closed and tying it, forcing my erection to subside, I head back inside, light the oil lamp on a low flame, and climb up into Hanahana’s bunk, seating myself beside her in the wide bed. I run a hand over her cheek; my heart pounds in my ears.

She opens one eye, and smiles. “What is?” she whispers.

“Hana, I’ve been thinking” I say.

“About?”

“I’ve changing my mind,” I reply. “About you,” I add.

Hana grins, sleepily, blushing, stretching.

She throws the covers aside, lying there in naked splendor; my breath catches in my throat. I realize that I desire her more than anything in this moment. Her body is my creation, a reimagining of what could have once been in the years when she had both youth and maturity.

I reach out and run a hand over her cheek, down her neck, over her breast and belly, to her hip and down her thigh. A lover’s caress.

Curvacious and supple, long and slender. Her almond-shaped brown eyes are wide with wonder, and with the pearly-white teeth in her wide mouth, she bites her narrow lower lip in anticipation.

She rolls onto her side, and reaches for the sash of my robe. I recline beside her take her head in two hands and rest another on her hips, and we kiss. She pulls the sash away, takes hold of the lapels and throws it open, looking over my bare form.

“Oh my,” she says, “that didn’t used to be there,” she says, reaching to my new member, already erect with anticipation.

“It’s just for you,” I say, blushing despite myself. She leans close again, and our lips meet. Her hand finds my cock, and gives it a slow pump, and I brush a strand of hair away from my face. With my lower arms, I reach for her waist and pull her hips to mine. My fingers find her sex from behind; her cunt is already dripping wet as I brush against it with a probing fingertip. She throws her leg over my waist.

In a smooth motion, I roll on top of her, placing her gently in the silky covers on her back. Her hand finds my cock again, and I slip two fingers inside past her folds for lubrication and up past her clit for pleasure. I rise from her supine form, supporting myself on my lower arms better than I ever did when I only had two.

My hands come to rest on her knees, and I gently push her legs apart. She props herself up on her elbows to see, and I let my cock come to rest against her folds. From the base of my erect member, I unfold a little extra — two slender, wet, ribbed tendrils, strong despite their slightness. As long as my cock, spaced a finger’s width apart; a little extra for enhnaced pleasuring.

I draw my hips back and angle my cock — hands-free, fully articulated — towards her cunt. With a deft movement, I reach over for the box of toys, and pick out the lube bottle. I let a dollop fall on my length, and the two tendrils encircle my shaft in spiraling motions to distribute it.

“Are you prepared?” I ask.

“Oh please just take me already,” she says.

I press forwards, and my cock plunges into her warm depths, relishing the feeling of light friction of her cunt pulling back my foreskin. The two tendrils slide up past her labia and come to slide right past her clitoris as I push forward giving extra pleasure to the both of us; to me the feeling of her clit between my… Feelers, is a ticklish inhuman delight.

Hana moans. “Oh, _yes,_ ” she whispers.

I draw back and plunge forwards again, eliciting another moan. I’m pushing eight inches, but in dark, perverted truth, I prepared for an eventuality such as this when I remade her body, giving her plenty of both elasticity and depth.

Taking hold under her knees, I lean forward with my next thrust, coming to rest with my elbows on either side of her head. My hands plunge into her curly hair, and I kiss her with tongue — a tongue that can reach a hand-span from my lips — like I mean it.

She moans into the kiss and I begin thrusting at a gentle pace. Her hands claw at my broad back, but then slide around to the front, coming to reast on my breasts; she takes my nipples in between her fingers and twist the sensitive little nubs, to the edge between pain and pleasure.

In reciprocation, I increase the pace and in a feat replicable by no mortal, make my cock vibrate. She comes, hissing into our kiss with her whole body tensing. It lifts my spirits tremendously to pleasure her so; I keep going and she relaxes somewhat for a spell, but soon enough she starts tensing up again and another orgasm overtakes her. This time she moans loudly, and in the throes of passion she yowls:

“ _Takall, my god, I love you._ ”

For a moment it throws me off; reflexively I want to say I love her back.

But that is untrue. She’s a means to a sexual end for me in this moment. “ _As is right,_ ” I wisper back, smiling. “ _Show my your love for your god._ ” She moans in my ear in reply.

Shifting focus, I begin working on my own pleasure, thrusting deeper and harder and a third time Hana climaxes, this time screaming. “ _You’re my god!_ ” she echoes. I feel my own climax building, a tightness in my pelvis that soon resolves into my pouch; a pressure building inside that promises sweet release, and a hot pleasure traveling up my shaft into her.

I bottom out with a feminine moan, and unleash my orgasm inside her, but there is no recession of intensity, no feeling of closure. I keep thrusting, and she convulses once more in orgasm, screaming incoherently and clawing at the sheeets. Her legs close around my waist and my free hands find her breasts instead.

No sooner am I back to plateuing than I feel another climax building, and breathy whimpers escape my lips. It’s even more intense, building on the edge of pain in my prostate, drawing my balls up so hard it almost hurts. I pick up the pace, my thighs slapping against her buttocks, and an electric surge travels from my insides through my cock, to the tip. This time I scream, and so does she. My toes curl and I shoot an even bigger load inside her.

No sooner have I finished, than I feel another orgasm building.

“ _Ow!_ Cramp! Cramp!” Hana exclaims.

“Endure it, dear,” I croon, and then whisper: “ _Once more, for your god._ ” I reach into her mind to turn off the pain while I piston away with abandon. She gushes and squirts as her sixth or seven orgasm overtakes her, having not even the energy left to scream, only mewl and whimper, mouth agape, eyes corssing. I plunge my length into her one penultimate time and unleash pump after pump, briefly pulling back to plunge back in, and let my orgasm abade.

I pull out and shamblingly shimmy over to collapse next to her; our mixed juinces flow freely from her sex, making a mess of the covers.

We stay there for an indetermintate time; exhausted beyond movement and even sleep.

“ _Wow,_ ” she breathes. “That was _way_ too much of a good thing.” Weakly she reaches out to her calf and begins massaging it.

“Yeah, not sure I am sorry about that,” I say, breathing deeply.

“Don’t be. My god, that was _everything_ I wanted.”

I prop myself up on one elbow and run a hand over her naked form.

“Although…” she says, putting a hand on her belly. “Am I going to bear your child now?”

“Do you mind?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “It would be an honor.”


	10. Visions of the Apocalypse

One benefit of the total morphological freedom my divinity affords me is that I can shoot blanks if I want to. All the fun of riding bareback, with none of the drawbacks.

“You are not pregnant,” I say. “I’m not virile unless I will it.”

Hana relaxes almost imperceptively.

I will myself up, braving the cold night air outside to grab the metal bathtub out of the trailer, emptying it of luggage and bringing it into the caravan; I unfold a tap nose to fill it with warm water, and find the scented soaps.

“My beddings are a mess,” Hana says.

“I’m going to dispose of them,” I say. “We don’t need two sets now anyway.”

She blushes, and I step over to help her up on legs shaking with exhaustion, easing her into the tub; then I roll up my soiled beddings and toss them out the door into a maw of shredding teeth and a gullet that leads to that place my extrusions come from.

The tub isn’t very large; but I climb in with Hana anyway and our legs intertwine underwater. “I’d kill for a bottle of wine right now,” I say.

Hana scoots further down in the water. “Can’t you just make one?”

“Not _well._ ”

I adjust my leg, and try to find a resting position with my extra arms. “This tub is too small.”

“I think it’s nice,” she says and brushes a submerged hand against my leg. Outside I begin extruding and filling a much bigger one — almost jacuzzi-sized, surrounding it with oil lamp torches for illumination.

I rise out of the water and lean in over Hana, deftly picking her up in a bridal carry with my strong arms. She giggles. “Where are you taking me?” I step out the door in lieu of answering that question, and she shivers for a second, wet, tired, and exposed to the cold night air. The big tub, surrounded by lamps gives off a lot of steam, and I gently lower Hana into it before joining her.

I haven’t bathed in days, but then my skin doesn’t sweat or excrete sebum; water repellant too.

By my hand, we’re served an artificially flavored floral desert wine, granola bars — my staple power bars augmented with real grain! — and a view of the starry sky.

“Tell me about the stars,” I say.

And she does. They are our ancestors, looking down from the afterlife, and when we die, we will join them. The constellations are oddly familiar somehow, and Hana has stories about all of them.

It doesn’t take long before the warm bath, cool air, and half a glass of wine becomes too much for her, and she starts nodding off. I lift her out of the water and wrap us both in soft towels, carrying her inside where in our absence my factory has remade the bed without bunks and room for both of us. Almost as an afterthought, I create a new anti-dream shield like my nightcap, large enough to form a shamanistically protective canopy over the bed, and crawl in under the luxurious covers with her in my arms. She turns over as the little spoon, and promptly falls asleep.

Ella, majestic and gloriously beautiful, is drooling on her pillow. I’m in the kitchen, making breakfast with the kids. Alex is sitting on the counter, swinging his legs. Tess is sitting in her high chair.

In an hour I’ll get Alex and Tess to preschool and daycare, wake Ella with breakfast on the bed. She takes her eggs scrambled and her hot cocoa sugar free.

Two hours ago, I was sleeping, big spoon to the love of my life. In four hours, I’ll be at the doctor’s office, getting my semiannual liver-checkup.

In six weeks time, we’ll leave the kids with her parents overnight and celebrate our anniversary. We dine out at a semi-expensive Vietnamese place, share a bottle of Asti, and fall asleep to old so-bad-they’re-good action flicks.

Five years ago we spent an entire month in bed, and nine months later we had Alex. It changed our lives in every way imaginable.

Standing there in the kitchen, I can only observe the frozen image of a person who look like I once did, laughing with their kids over coffee, toast, cereal, and fruit. They are me, as I were, not as I am. The smart wallclock reads the date of the morning after — the day I didn’t get.

I reach out to touch Ella’s cheek and feel like trying to grasp through a sheet of tight plastic. I claw at it, desperate; call her name but it feels like shouting underwater.

_My god, please._

Hana’s hand grasps my wrist.

_You cannot. The Far Plane is forever barred from being touched._

You brought me here, why can’t I take her with me?

_You could, but she would never forgive you, would she?_

From here, that strange clarity hangs in the back of my mind, and I know in my heart of hearts that bringing Ella over would destroy her.

_And you would likely destroy yourself, too. We are only looking, after all. To summon a god is another thing entirely._

Did you bring me here?

_You pulled, and I made a way for us._

I move _kata,_ following myself through time; financial success, a good family, a world slowly falling into ruin despite humanity’s best efforts, the eventual decline of western civilization’s capitalist society in favor of socialized economies desperately fighting a losing battle against climate change. I die full of accomplishment and regrets having given an even more uncertain future over to my kids; my grandkids.

I pull away, hard, shattering the image before us.

To a place in my soul where there is only the curning of dark satanic mills. Hana cries out for me and I reach into her brain and put her in a dreamless sleep, regretting it almost as soon as I do it.

I brood, alone.

Hana lies on my arms, but her weight is as nothing to my robust flesh. My hafl-erect cock has somehow nestled itself between her thighs. I sit up, no longer really interested in coitus, and contemplate getting rid of the appendage.

Instead, I rummage through the mess that has accumulated, and find my smoking pipe. I stuff it with cannabindoids and smokeless accelerant, grab the rifle and binoculars take to the roof of the wagon in the nude.

Normally, I leave guard duty up to a set of small drones painted the shade of the night sky, hovering on silent ion-craft wings, with the inefficiencies of the technology — mainly the need for extremely high voltage and energy storage — mediated by thaumic workarounds.

I relax and let my sadness take over. Under a clear, moonless night sky, I cry quietly, missing my family so terribly. I cry out of rage that I’m some copy made against my will, to live a life I didn’t choose. I cry out of anger at a reality that made this possible. I cry out of horror that for all my generation did, we couldn’t save Earth. I cry out of fear that still, none of this is verifiably real.

I wonder, briefly, if I can even die. I wonder, briefly, if Vegatia isn’t just the creation of some mad, future simulationist, or worse yet, it is some creation of an unfriendly god-AI.

No way to know. Not at present anyway.

The sun rises, and I wipe my eyes and light my pipe. If nothing else, so long as there are things to do, I can distract myself.

I hop down, shaking the wagon as I land on the front step, and head inside. I unload the rifle and stow it above the door, and being making breakfast.

Hana eventually stirs, to find me sitting by the folding table, with a presentable non-extruded (well, minimally extruded) meal ready.

I’m drinking Hot water laced with stimulants found in coffee, tea, and cocoa; seasoned with a laundry list of herbal aroma compounds, quinine, salt and caramelized sugar. It’s a passable competitor to morning coffee. I’m still working on a name for it. ‘Stimbrew,’ perhaps.

She rubs her eyes, and wraps a sheet of silky fabric around her for warmth. “You’ve been crying,” she says.

I nod. “I don’t think I need much sleep.”

“I… I tried getting to you after we went to the Far Plane. What happened?”

I shake my head. “Sorry. I wished to be alone.”

She nods, and even as I stare into my glass of stim, I catch her biting her lip out of the corner of my third eye. I’m sitting here, nude, sprawled on my chair, legs spread for all to see. “What can I get you?” I ask and drum up her arousal for sport.

“Well… If you are in a sullen mood, it struck me that I could perhaps _distract_ you. But after yesterday, I am not sure I can handle more of you.” She grins.

I grin. “And if I decide I want you anyway?”

She hesitates. “Then I suppose I shall have to. You are my god after all.”

“Come eat with me first,” I say.


	11. Boundaries and Open Questions

Hana takes a seat and eats greedily of my cooking: boiled grains, dried fruits pickled in sugar water, and dried meat in artifical honey glaze. A dessert, really. She samples the stimulant brew, and finds it not to her liking.

“I’m afraid I must decline,” I say.

Hana frowns.

“It is not that I didn’t enjoy yesterday, but I think you should be careful not getting overly familiar.”

She bows her head. “Pardon, my god.”

“You love me, and that is fine, but I am not your lover. I don’t think I am able to take one right now. You may love me, and worship me with your body, but I will not love you back, except as my… High Priestess. You are a servant, to me. Valuable and irreplacable, but still a servant.”

She blushes. “Your servant?”

“If I recall, one of the first things you said to me was that I might find you a cunning servant, no?”

“I did say that,” she concedes.

I rise. “I am glad we see eye-to-eye on this. Get dressed.”

As we do, as Hana mischeviously takes every opportuinity to give me a view of her rear, I realize we’re still wearing the same clothes as I wove for us on day two.

When we go to take our usual seats for the day’s drive, I take the passenger seat.

“Takall?” Hana asks me.

“Have a seat,” I say.

Hesitantly, she takes a seat.

“Don’t be shy, you’ve seen me do this,” I say. I gesture to the wheel, “hand,” the throttle “hand,” and the brake pedal “foot.”

“Now what?” she says.

I reach into her neural lace. “Relax, and pay attention.”

Controlling her like a puppet, I grasp the throttle with her hand, and shove it forward. We take off with a descent acceleration over the rough terrain, and I keep the course steady through her hand on the wheel.

“What are you doing to me?” she asks, bewildered.

“Teaching.”

We cruise for a few minutes, and gradually I ease my control of her motor cortex, letting her get back in control, gently guiding her cognitive feedback between senses and motor skill, rather than taking direct control.

“Are you comfortable with this?” I ask.

“No.”

“You’re doing great.”

“It’s terrifying.”

“You’re trhilled,” I shoot back.

I pat her on the back and keep watch through her eyes, while I get up and head back into the cabin.

For the first time since I arrived here, I put freshly-assembled pen to extruded paper, and structure my thoughts in deliberate fashion.

  * _Assumptions:_

    * _I’m not insane._
    * _All these weird dreams are trustworthy. (Because magic?)_
    * _There’s no ‘catch.’_
    * _That’s a 3× big if-combo._
  * _Godhood_

    * _Gods exist, I am one._
    * _God as in olympian._
    * _I am a ‘god’._
    * _What of? Tools? Artisans?_
    * _Do gods even have portfolios here?_
    * _Power of creation and destruction, in a controlled manner._
    * _Living the bona fide transhumanism-post-scarcity-fuck-you-physics dream._
    * _What are_ other _gods like? Power level?_
  * _Me_

    * _Limits?_
    * _Creation, destruction_
    * _Mostly biomech stuff, pure raw materials_ *_ Is my power growing?_
    * _New bodies, hive mind_
    * _A little bit of fibreoptic brain in every bite_
    * _How did it work with my meat brain?_
    * _Souls exist according to a-priori knowledge_
    * _Is my a-priori technical knowledge reliable?_
    * _Empirically it would seem so_
  * _Isekai_

    * _Earth is some sort of dream realm._
    * _This place is not a planet, planets don’t get that large._
    * _Bubble world? back of the envelope suggests Jupiter-mass core._
    * _No moons, probably no space travel._
    * _Physics mostly work._
    * _Magic?_
  * _Hanahana:_

    * _She says she chose me for my personality and/or morals._
    * _Worshipper? What about her tribe?_
    * _She’s probably in love with me._
    * _The sex is good._
    * _Strong sub vibes._
    * _What the hell am I doing with this?_
    * _Quagmire of feelings; I miss my wife._
  * _Open questions:_

    * _Political landscape?_
    * _Tech level?_
    * _Potential enemies? Power levels are high enough to warrant preventative first strike tactics._
  * _Goals_

    * _Transhumanism?_
    * _Democracy/freedom/utopia?_
    * _Gather knowledge._



I eat the pen, commit the whole list to memory and and incinerate the paper. A brain made of fiber-optics doesn’t suffer from issues of memory, or from the laundry list of mental disorders I struggled with on Earth.

It all falls into three broad categories of problems: there’s epistemological ones that amount to answering troublesome ‘wh-’ word-based queries. Dependent on the answers of those, there’s practical problems like not being immediately ousted as a god mostly because it would probably throw a spanner in the works with regards to information gathering. Lastly there’s moral problems like whether it’s even OK for me to take advantage of Hanahana.

I grind my teeth and begin sketching clothes instead. When I first created these outfits, I mimicked what I was familiar with from Earth, but there is no need to do so.

If I am only ever wearing this shirt unbuttoned and tucked to show off my tits, there’s no reason for it to be able to button.

Indeed, for laying low, as much as my extra arms and third eye are fun, they are far too conspicuous.

In the confines of the caravan, my factory emerges writhing, and I tear my arms out with surgical precision. The arms themselves, I bid to fall into torpor, and fit the exposed bone and flesh with one half of a modular attachment system, fitting the other half into the wounds on my back, such that they lie hidden and invisible beneath unscarred skin.

I excise my eye, much to the same effect, seal the lid, and it in a jar.

Back to human baseline, at least with regards to bodyplan.

With an effort of will, I turn my skin a darker bronze, my hair from silvery blues to copper, and my eyes to golden hazel. I’m still inhumanly attractive, but at least I have plausible deniability now.

I stuff my spare arms in a chest ( _ha!_ ), and put the eye-in-a-jar on a shelf.

Where this leaves me, is with a shirt and coat that have four sleeves. I shred my old clothes and go about creating a new one.

The actual clothes I need, I don’t have the information to make; not yet. Once we reach civilization, some careful fashion espionage will be necessary.

I pierce my ears with silver loops twisted into the likeness of infinity symbols, adorn my neck in a heavy silver snake chain with a lock fashioned after the ouroboros, and my wrists with and fingers with plain silver bangles and bands. I adorn my skin with sporadic pentagon-hexagons tilings, mimicking patterns of epithelial cells to follow the topography of my skin.

To alleviate my nudity, I reach for the most advanced textile tech I can possibly make given the space limitations of my production within the caravan. I dress myself in an leotard: high-collared, with a window in the back, and what amounts to a dancer’s belt’s worth of genital support in the crotch.

It is fashioned from a blend of material science far beyond the twenty first century, and bona-fide magitech. It’s bullet, stab, and fire proof, passively climate controlled, stretchy, smooth as silk, and self-cleaning. The surface is coated in microscopic optical color scales akin to butterfly wings, transmuting incoming light into every color of the rainbow, giving the appearance of an extra-vivid, almost reflective white.

_(If Saruman was a Sailor Senshi.)_

For footwear I create thigh-high boots with adjustable wedge heels, made of an pizoelectric polymer that enable them to roll themselves on and off for a complete skin-tight fit at the press of a button. The material is so black as to turn my legs into mere silhouettes. Also, bullet, stab, and fire-proof, with hard memory-form armor along the shins and over the kneecaps.

Overtop, a warm gray jacket with shawl lapels that can switch between dinner blazer, and long, flowing duster at the application of a magical trigger; as well as an entire gamut of colors and patterns, including ones not visible to humans.

Around my waist I sling a belt of utility pouches; all of them with this worlds equivalent of a bag-of-holding enchantment.

I look in no small way like a third-rate 90’s super-hero, (as drawn by someone with a firm sense of anatomy, despite his horniness.)

Outside, I feel the sun going down. Working like this requires a dangerous level of focus. I initiate an autonomous background mental process to notice high focus and automatically run a pomodoro timer. A note to self, of sorts.

Now to ask for a second opinion—


	12. Disguises and Revelations

Through the neural lace, I twiddle Hana’s auditory center, projecting my voice into her head.

_[You can stop for the night.]_

I read her words from her speech centers: _[Takall?]_

 _[I’m speaking to you in the mind,]_ I say. _[It’s a thing I can do.]_

_[Oh.]_

She eases the throttle and the brakes, bringing the whole caravan to a gentle halt. The battery underneath the carriage is nearing depletion, so I make a note of replacing it before the last leg of our lonesome (twosome?) journey tomorrow.

The front door opens, and she steps in, looking slightly dustier and sweatier than I left her. It’s been a hot day. Fortunately it’s not the first day she — or we — spend in the driver’s seat, so she hasn’t been for want of food or water.

“Good job today,” I say. “You made good time.”

“My goddess, you’ve altered your appearance again,” she says.

I spin slowly in place, for her to admire. “Do you like it?”

She blushes. “I always like your appearance, my goddess.”

We exit together and I draw Hanahana a bath and weave her a clean dress, while cooking for us; culturing fresh meat on the spot and building a gas burning grill. It’s a small, feast the last we’ll have in a while before we’ll be among other travellers and need to keep low profile.

The sun sets beyond the horizon — in fact, its light dims to near nothing a few degrees above it from the sheer mass of air between us and it, owing to Vegatia’s size — while we eat.

“I’ve been thinking some,” I say. “About what to do when we reach other people.”

“Yes?”

“We should keep my nature hidden for the most part; it’s as your son says, my mere presence invites peril. There’s already at lease one enemy who knows of my existence, if note more depending on whether anyone has communicated with your tribe.”

“How did that happen?”

“In a dream. Some sort of not-human person. Like a wet lizard.”

“A _Rhae_ ,” she says.

The local word for human is _Holo_ , and from the way her neurology reacts when she says this word, _Rhae_ , it is immediately clear that _Rhae_ and _Holo_ are the same kind of thing. A sapient species.

“There are other thinking beings than humans?” I ask.

“Of course!” she says.  
" _Guadals have strong backs and puffiest cheeks,_  
_Rhae are clammy with slimy scalps and feet,_  
_Maastri have scales and feather’d shoulders,_  
_Holo are lanky apes with furry heads,_  
_Polatze have quick hands and bushy tails._

“ _Fortuns are eight-legged and live in the earth,_  
_Hirnans are ten-legged and live by the shore,_  
_Frasn’ are ten-armed and swim through the sea,_  
_Wujis are six-legged and fly in the sky,_  
_Amati are wormy and walk the sea floor._ ”

With each line of the poem, my scientific knowledge flares in the back of my mind, causing me to remember the obvious fact that there exist ten different sapient species on Vegatia. Of course. Why not.

The separation in the poem is between the terrestrial vertebrates who get along quite nicely. To compare them to their closest Earth counterparts: Guadals are theriodont weasel-people, Rhae are edopoid salamander-people, Maastri are tyrannosaurid dinosaur-people, and Polatze are procyonid raccoon-people.

… And then the various non-vertebrates: tardigrade-people, isopod-people, nautilus-people, insect-people, and nudribranch-people.

I rub my temple. This place is full of curveballs, and unfortunately my a-priori knowledge of science precludes such particulars as earth sciences, astronomy, geography, antrhopology, and everything else that might be construed as ‘stamp collecting’ by cynical and narrow-minded physicists; save mattes of biology and technology, of course.

Thankfully, somehow, the length of a year is the same, the seasons are comparable, and there is such a thing as a north star, so the orbit of this weird-ass planet is roughly comparable to Earths, at least insofar as the sun in the sky is the same size. Incidentally, Hana is seventy-one years old.

(There’s also two dozen moons so small they are just dots of light moving over the sky.)

“Right. A salaman — another god — contacted me in a dream, and told me he knew I existed, then tried to make me forget. It was the first time I slept on this world.”

She frowns. “That’s worrying. What did they look like?”

“Dressed in black. He didn’t give his name.”

She frowns deeper.

“After that, I made the dream barrier we sleep under,” I add.

“Yes, it’s quite marvelous that one. How dows it work?”

I shrug. “Are you familiar with the fact that the mind resides in the brain?” She nods. “It’s like a very thin brain that meditates on nothingness.”

She grins. “Clever… I might make a shaman out of you yet!”

“To return to the subject at hand; we need to stay hidden, hence my appearance change. I need to look like just another human. And we need clothes and a wagon that match what people expect.”

“I can help with that,” Hana says.

“How?”

She scoffs. “By _deepdreaming_ , you sillyness. What do you think that _is?_ What people expect to see is the easiest thing to figure out by _far._ I’ll have us disguised in no-time.”

I giggle. It’s almost easy to forget that Hana is very competent in _magic_. Not a very flashy kind, but arguably the most dangerous kind: the information-gathering kind.

I smile and she boasts of how she can daydream and skim the surface of the minds of those merely lost in thought, not fully asleep; how she doesn’t even need drugs to enter the sleeping mind of another, and we both know she managed to summon _me_ here.

It’s a little bit sexy.

We finish dinner, and clear away — cutlery and plates, grill, table, chairs, all of it goes into my ceramic-toothed disintegration maws.

“Come meditate with me,” Hana says.

She takes a seat cross-legged in the grass, and I sit down beside her. I close my eyes, control my breathing, and focus inwards on the churning biomechanical darkness that is the depths of my mind. Gradually I slip my conscious awareness out of my body.

_Takall._

Hana brings me to an imagined featureless space, feeling like the ‘mind palace’ one goes to in some schools of guided meditation.

_Let’s see what we can glean—_

She begins conjuring images and ideas of style, fashion, normalcy, shapes of conveyance, modes of and reasons for travelling. I pluck ideas from the stream, putting together mood boards for our wardrobes and changes I need to make to the caravan. I send instructions on beyond this space; no reason not to pipeline.

We’re married.

_What?_

We’ll pretend to be a couple.

_But you’re a woman— well, a god, but you appear to be a woman._

I brandish a sliver of an idea she threw past me, extrapolating from it to find a nugget of truth that indeed, women marry women, in places not far from here — indeed in places I am planning for us to visit. It’s not entirely not to yank her chain that I’m suggesting this.

_You’re toying with my feelings, are you?_

Do you mind?

She takes a moment to steady herself.

_Very well, I shall pretend to be your wife; what are you?_

A wealthy, eccentric merchant and artificer of course.

_Do you have enough to work with?_

I do.

We break the shared trance, and I return my awareness to my body. Hana is already standing up, looking about at my factory.

“You can build while you meditate?” she asks.

“Of course.”

Ready made for us is several sets of clothing that balance familiarity and foreign-ness to our destination, a city I’ve felt the implied presence of in the distance, while also staying true to our tastes.

Hana gets to wear jewllery in dark metals and gold, symbols and sigils; ankhs, crosses, pentagrams, concentric circles, daggers, flowers, ears of wheat, heads of cattle, skulls of birds; and a modest fashion of dark earthly colors, flowery lace and knotted frills and sheer fabrics and loose knits, in flowing skirts, scarves, shawls, and sashes.

I’ve made a point of much the same array of fabrics, but fashioned with less decoration in waistcoats, shirts, tunics, tights, stockings, dresses, and body-stockings; with more contrasting hues of warm colors, light and dark; and the silver jewlellery I’ve already made.

Our wagon has been refurbished, tearing out much of the suspension, electric drivetrain, and metal parts, replacing it with a purely wooden and thaumic components. It’s going to be slower, less energy-efficient, and more bumpy, but then we’re going to be on prepared roads soon.

“It’s late,” I note. “Shall we retire?”


	13. Intimacy and Idolatry Before the Reckoning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: sex, fellatio, semi-voluntary body-control

The inside of the caravan is narrower by a third now; edging into ‘cramped’ territory. I’ve made the bed able to fold up flush with the wall to compensate. Hana inspects the clothes I’ve made for her, undressing to try things on, seizing in particular on the boots and jewelry. I hang my jacket, but keep my boots on, and enjoy the view.

“These boots are too narrow,” she points out. It’s a lovely pair in supple, light-brown artificial leather, with a modest two-inch heel.

True enough, he toes are wide apart, the mark of a life lived barefoot. “Shall I help you with that?” I ask.

I kneel down before her where she sits, and take her bare foot in my hands. With a dollop of oil secreted from my palms, and my hands warming themselves up, I begin massaging her feet; thoroughly and with intimate knowledge of anatomy — hers in particular. Running hard knuckles over her arches and pressing fingers between her metatarsals. I loosen up between her toes and crack the joints gently.

She enjoys it immensely, and I increase the heat, pressing on nerve clusters and the joints between the bones deep in the foot. And then Hana curls her toes and squishes her thighs together, giving a little squeal.

Surprised, I reach inwards to re-interpret the last few seconds of the feed from her neural lace. I smile.

She takes a deep breath to steady herself.

I continue the massage, and unfold a few gangly spider-legs from my elbows. Seamlessly and painlessly they phase into her feet and readjust ligaments ever so slightly. The human foot is an evolutionary disaster of 26 bones and 33 joints. Laying bare the bones and ligaments alone shows it for what it is: duct tape and staples turning the grasping hand of a brachiating ape into a pursuit predator’s running implement.

Finishing the surgery, I continue the massage, and finally slip her into a pair of thigh-high stockings knit from silk with lace edges. Then I slip the boots onto her feet and lace them up.

“Wow,” she breathes. “That was really good.”

She stands and twirls, letting her dress spin a little, tapping a toe to the floor. “Hm; is this really what women wear in the cities?”

“Yeah.”

“I can’t imagine what compels them to not wear something without this—” she taps the heel. “It’s like I’m constantly slipping forwards, bumping my toes.”

“It makes one’s feet appear smaller, and it gives definition to the calf. And it makes you taller.” I stand, and Hana steps close to me.

I’ve cut some of my height, no longer towering over people with otherworldly splendor, but I am still tall; especially for my apparent gender and the standards of nutrition I hypothesize are prevalent in this part of the world.

Hana’s crown reaches my collarbone.

“I’m really very aroused right now,” she says, and runs a hand over the bulge in my leotard. “But I’m afraid I’m still terribly sore since yesterday. Sad though it is, could you calm me? I don’t think I can do it myself with you dressed that way.”

“If my clothes are a problem, maybe you should relieve me of them?” I tease. Taking her free hand, I lead it to my inner thigh. I take control of her hand and pinch the lip of the boot’s fabric, initiating the retracting mechanism. In a snap, it rolls itself down the length of my leg, all the way to the heel. I repeat the process by proxy with the other one, and step out of them entirely.

“And how do I get you out of this one?” Hana asks, pulling at the leg opening of my leotard, still rubbing a hand over my cock, which is now straining against the fabric some, laid flat against my belly.

Unhitching the dongle from the fabric at the neck with a finger, I let her take it and unzip me from neck to crotch. It’s no ordinary zipper; rather a system of memory fibers intertwining or unlinking as the dongle runs across them, very nearly as strong as the fabric itself, and more importantly seamless.

Finally my _god_ hood stands free, twitching with anticipation.

I push her gently aside to attend the upper cupboard, to fetch the chest of sex toys and the one with my extra arms. Opening one, I dig out the massive vibrator wand with the heavy battery. “Have you tried this?” I ask.

She blushes and shakes her head.

Opening the other, I take my extra arms, and will the seams on my back to open up, touching the naked bones to the barelaid joints; the attachment is painless and instantaneous. I roll my four shoulders asynchronously, and the skin on my lower arms change to match my new hue.

“Turn around,” I say. She does.

I bend down to take hold of the hem of her dress, and pulls it up over her head, leaving her naked save for the boots and stockings — she never go around to trying on the underwear, afterall. As I do, my other hands run over her form, drinking in the feeling of her skin.

Reaching around her, I fall into one of the chairs and pull her body towards mine, letting my rising cock nestle in between her butt cheeks and letting my legs go between hers, speading them apart. I’m reclining a little, and so she reclines a lot, giving me free access to her sex.

Taking the wand in hand, I hold it up for her to see, and guide her hand to close around it. The ‘real’ Hitachi famously doesn’t have a ‘low’ setting, but I’ve gone and added one for this one.

I turn it on and the angry buzz of the powerful electric motor is enough to make Hana start. “What _is_ this?”

“Yours,” I say.

I put it in her hand, close my own around hers, and seek out her breasts with two hands and her hair with the last. Together we guide the powerful tool to rest on her mound and she flicks it on. She gives a little ‘ _oh_ ’-sound, and gently I slide it down to her clitoris.

She moans long and heartfelt, almost a sigh.

I push it down to rest against her clit and cunt lips, and she grunts and arches her back against me.

“Is it good?” I ask.

“ _So_ good.” She moans again. “My _god_ , this device is incredible.”

Abrubtly, I turn the machine off. “Get on your knees,” I say.

With alacrity and grace, she hops down from my legs, turns and kneels before me. With a gentle foot, I push her legs apart, and she takes my meaning and puts the wand back in its pleasuring place, turning it back on to the low power setting.

I stand to my full height, taking the lube bottle out to lather my cock, and then I turn to her which puts it at the level of her face. I aim it at her lips, and put both my sets of arms akimbo, looking down at her expectantly.

She grasps my shaft and strokes it gently and skillfully, making a mess of her hand, then opens her mouth and takes the tip past her lips. She draws back at little, and then ventures deeper. I my lower hands in her hair and my upper ones to work at massaging my breasts. It is not as good as her cunt, but it is _very_ good still.

With every pump she goes a little deeper, and I feel my tip strike her velum. I catch her gagging reflex in her brain stem and quash it.

“Are you comfortable?” I ask.

She looks up at me and winks.

I take hold of her head and control of the situation, pushing her gently forwards. I push her past the point where she should be gagging, and let my pliable cock take the bend down. Her nose bumps against my pubic mound, and she can no longer breathe.

She looks up at me, expectantly.

I pull her back until my tip is resting on her tongue, and she draws breath through her nose.

Then I begin thrusting, slowly at first, then picking up speed to a modest pace. I pump away down her throat, usurping her breathing rythm to synch it with my thrusts.

I plateau, rising with a wave of pleasure. I moan; long, drawn out, almost humming.

She shifts the machine to medium and I feel her orgasm rising through the lace in her brain; my own is spurred by a disire to have us coincide, and I almost reach the point of holding her back. She moans around my cock; incredibly tittilating.

Then I feel boiling climax rise in my pelvis and keep myself in check, not betraying my pleasure by increasing speed. I draw it out, keeping myself on the edge until even just such slow pumping brings me to the cusp.

I pull her back to let my cockhead rest on her tongue, well past the point of no return. Just as I begin shooting my load, she ascends to her own climax, and she groans as her mouth begins filling with my seed.

The emissions of mortals are an acquired taste, dependent on diet and a myriad of other factors. My own seed is a much more balanced flavor, with a thick, smooth consistency, balanced melange, and a heady, arousing aroma; and enough volume for more than a mere taste.

She swallows eagerly, one gulp, then two, then three.

I roll my shoulders as the release abades, and resists the temptation to go for another one. Quickly, I pull out, leaving Hana to gasp for breath.

She slumps backwards, supporting herself on one hand while still grinding the wand against her sex. I sit back down, watching her get herself off with a hungry eagerness.

“You’re insatiable,” I say, and I pour myself another glass of stim.

“Does it please you?” she asks.

“Oh yes,” I say, and my hand comes to rest on my cock, stroking slowly.

“Your seed is delicious.”

Throug her neural lace, I take control of her thumb and flick the machine to the highest setting, eliciting another loud moan. I grant her a shiver spell, which seems to trigger her third climax this evening. She whimpers loydly, arching her back.

Now it is my turn to bite my lip, and my cock twitches at the sight. “Come here,” I say.

Reclining in post-orgasmic bliss, she releases her iron grip on the wand vibe and crawls over to me. I put a hand in her hair and guide her face to my groin. Taking hold of her hair proper, I align her face and moves my cock to her lips once more. Her hands find my balls, and begins slowly massaging them under subtle guidance from me.

She opens and takes my length to the base. Once more I synchronize her breathing, and this time I let myself just enjoy. My orgasm rises quickly and I let it. I come and she swallows; I continue, and her arousal climbs. She keeps her eyes locked with mine, making small whimpering moans every so often.

Taking her head with two hands and bracking mysself against the chair with my other two, I begin adding in some hip movement. I feel another orgasm building and I let it, bottoming out against her face and shooting my load deep into her stomach. She breaks my gaze, her eyes rolling back in her head, and she shudders as an orgasm rolls through her. I keep going through it, and she closes her eyes fully, slumping slightly.

My last orgasm rises and I rise with it, pushinf the chair over, and fucking her face with abandon; forcing myself not to bottom out as my seed flows over. She drinks eagerly of this… _Sacrament._

I pull out of her mouth, allowing her to speak once more.

“ _Oh my god,_ ” she mutters in bewilderment.

I take hold of her body and pull her up from the floor and onto me, into a deep kiss. My long tongue probes her greedily, and she surrenders into the kiss. She tastes of my come, and I quell my desire to fuck her all night.

Taking her in a bridal carry, I relieve her of her footwear, fold the table away and our bed forth, and lay her to rest. I cast off my leotard and detach my extra arms before slipping under the covers with her.


	14. The Banality of Prejudice on the Open Road

After a light breakfast, and dressing up in our new costumes. I offer to pierce Hanahana’s ears, but she declines. I do her makeup and then mine, and we dress for the day and the first social interaction in the skin of our assumed personas.

Unfortunately, my cock has to go to maintain appearances. Hanahana proposes we hold a mock funeral for it. I replace it with a genderless slit that opens to a cavity, a well of potential for future experimentation.

Hanahana wears a grey hooded shawl and a thigh-length tunic dress over bare legs in the aforementioned heeled boots, and every article of jewelry she can fit on at once. I’m wearing a broad-brimmed hat with a red feather; a brown leather jacket over a black dress and bright yellow boots with wedge heels.

Getting the new drivetrain to move us throws me for a spin. It’s the first spell I’ve ever cast under my own power, and it is surprisingly simple. Grasping the wheel, it is almost like it lets itself be known in my mind; all I need to do is will it to move, with a cognitive modality I didn’t realize I had until today.

The exchange between myself and the motion of the wagon, is one that I haven’t given much thought to yet. There isn’t even any sort of magical organ system that mediates it, as I might have imagined. Simply put, the ordinary tissues of living bodies do double duty in various ways that are… _Magically_ significant.

A-priori knowledge of magic tells me that base biology interacts with what amounts to an almost parasitic reservoir of energy — call it an aura if you will. It leeches a little bit of metabolic leftovers, exploits body heat gradients, and emulates piezoelectricity in the motor system. It can also give back, on rare occasion.

The construct body I inhabit has similar systems, inspired loosely as it is by human flesh. My aura has been leeching power from high-throughput bio-chemistry and high voltage neurons. I channel it through liquid crystal, rather than flesh. I’m virtually inexhaustible, and press the wagon forward with the efficacy of an archmage.

The road is gravel, not cobbles, which lends itself to a much smoother ride compared to cross-country with no suspension; it is raised too, with drainage ditches to the side, which tells me a lot about the level of engineering: it could very well be a macadamized road. Our caravan picks up speed, and I start counting the mile markers, mentally measuring how far apart they are in saner units.

Hanahana is very intrigued by these artificial landscape features.

It’s barely an hour and a half before we find some other traffic. A canvas-covered wagon drawn by one of those dinosaur draft animals: duck bill-shaped jaws, a bare head with a cresting formation on the crown, body covered in feather of subdued and muted earthen colors, and a sturdy tail for balance that in this case hovers just over the wagon beside the driver.

Drawing the load of the wagon by yoke, the beast makes a mostly bipedal gait, occasionally righting itself with a foreleg. It turns its head to look at us with a single yellow eye.

I steer up to the side of the wagon and find a _Maastri_ — saurman, if you will — coach. My divine a-priori knowledge helpfully (and heteronormatively) supplies the secondary sexual characteristics, notably the small head crest, muted shoulder plumage, and slightly larger physique, indicating female sex.

It’s difficult to describe what it’s like to look upon a non-human sapient… Picture the bipedal gait of a bird, but the torso and tail of a spider monkey, weighting in at fifty-ish kilograms.

Saurmen evolved _into_ brachiators, from quasi-social bipedal omnivorous foragers, developing strong arms, suitable for primitive tool use, which led to better diet enabling larger brains and the runaway social competition for intelligence that also created the human mind.

Dinosaurs, to begin with, don’t look like that. The three kinds I’ve seen so far have small nostrils at the tip of their snouts, and lips protecting the moisture-sensitive enamel of their teeth. They are also much meatier than the shrink-wrapped skeletons artistic imaginings would suggest, having rolls of skin, muscle, glands, and fat around what humanity thought was slender, alien anatomy. They are feathered, but more like flightless birds, freed from the constraints of lift and aerodynamics.

The other driver’s head — all saurmans’, really — is bare of feathers, for thermoregulation, and her shoulders are plumed with articulated feathers in brown-orange hues for social displaying. Her skull is slightly elongated and her face is surprisingly human.

There’s the short, weak jaw of a species that kills with their hands and cooks their food, a nose that rises from the lips without a medial cleft and bridges into a cranial ridge terminating near her crown, eyes with slit pupils in amber irises and visible sclera. Her skin is wine-dark and textured with hyperkeratinized patches that resemble, but are not true scales, and her fingers bear pronounced nails that fall short of being true claws.

Her posture is the forward hunch of a spine without an S-curve, aided by the dexterous tail extending behind her seat. She’s dressed in a draping red garment, reminiscent of classical antiquity, covering her torso and running down her tail; along with pants and sleeves, and an absence of shoes showing digitigrade feet with dexterous, strong, clawed toes.

I’m about to greet her, when I realize we might not share a language. I wave a hand in greeting.

Hanahana speaks up, and I only catch on by observing her neurology: “ _Greeting. Good day, good road?_ ” The grammar is stilted and deliberately simplified. A trade pidgin?

“ _Greeting._ ”

And that’s the extent of conversation we have. They turn their attention back to the road, and although I’ve never seen an actual saurman I recognize the nonverbal message of ‘leave me the fuck alone.’

I press the propulsion spell, and we overtake the other wagon.

It’s not long before we overtake another traveller, again, much to the same effect. We see no carts, but lots of wagons; no humans, lots of saurmans, and hostility.

We reach a gathering area on the road, a rest stop in a large stone circle. An impromptu market place has sprung up, with people chatting, coins and wares changing hands, sold out of the backs of wagon. There’s almost merriment, and it quells somewhat as soon as we roll up.

Glares come our way, there’s pointing fingers, and whispered somethings between conversation partners.

“I get the feeling we’re not wanted,” Hanahana says.

I chew on my pipe. “Yeah you should look into it.”

“What, like, do a little dreaming? No need my—” she stops herself from saying _my goddess_. “Takall, dearest —” she winks and grins “— saurmans don’t like humans; they think less of us humans.”

That’s an ugly generalization, but I suspect the kernel of truth underneath it is a culture of racism in the region. I know for a fact that the Lady Tyrant is saurman. It’s easy to believe them emboldened for it.

I pick up my staff — a replacement for the guns I’d really like to be carrying in the tool belt of bigger-on-the-inside pouches. But the guns are a few dozen years too advanced, if I read Hanahana’s second-hand streams of consciousness right, and bags of holding are the purview of wizards beyond what I can pretend to be.

The staff is a tool, like the wagon’s drivetrain, it converts my aura into destruction. It’s quite possibly ten times finer than any wizard has ever held, but it is easier to pass by a layman.

I take a seat on the hub of one of the front wheels, and smoke my pipe. If they want to give me the evil eye, I shall pose.

And then at once we’re just a background detail to be ignored. People have better things to do than glare. It gives me opportunity to observe and learn — mannerisms, social conventions, fragments of language, the prevalence of money in trade. It is fascinating.

One of them, a man — bright orange shoulder plumage, slightly more powerful build and grey-toned skin — in fine robes approaches us.

“ _Greeting_ ” he says jovially.

“ _Greeting,_ ” Hanahana replies.

“ _You speak north-plains-shepherd-dialect?_ ”

“We do!” Hanahana says.

“Grand! Then we can converse with more… How do you say: fineness?”

“Nuance?” I suggest.

He grins, slightly stilted. Facial cues are but one facet of saurman nonverbal communication, along with a sophisticated system of signals with tail and plumage; but comprise almost all of human nonverbal cues — apart from gestural emblems, but those are cultural. He is making a commendable effort to communicate. “Nuance, thank you.”

“What can we do for you, mister..?” I ask.

“Elzok vaz Harzek, travelling merchant. I was hoping to converse; I am fond of meeting new people and… Opportunities.”

I take off my hat. “I am Takall, travelling maker of magic devices, this is my wife, Hanahana.”

His shoulder plumage fluctuates slightly, and he purses his lips. “Forgive me, you are both female, yes?”

“Correct,” I lie. “Is that a problem?”

He grins again. “Of course not; in my mother’s tongue, there are different words for ‘wife’ and I just misunderstood. I am very happy on your behalf, marriage is beautiful thing.”

A bell rings out.

“Ah, time to go,” Elzok says. “Perhaps we meet again; perhaps in the Red City.”


	15. Iron and Stone and Feathers

The bell signifies the arrival of someone: everyone turns to look in the same direction, which is obscured to me. I jump up and scale the side of the wagon in two bounds, and see a group of saurmans dressed in red robes, clustered around a small belfry.

Then I feel an awful presence, quickly resolving itself into a point on the horizon which crosses the breath of the sky in an eye-blink.

It has a kaleidoscope-like plethora wings and eyes which span a hundred metres from tip to tip; feathers made of cadmium-red, mercury-red, lithium-crimson fire; pupils glowing Cherenkov-blue. It touches down on legs clawed with polished steel.

« _What the fuck,_ » I mutter under my breath, and somewhere in the back of my mind, an arsenal of devastating and inhuman weapons begin announcing itself.

This thing can kill me. That is not an evaluation, or a judgement, or a guess. I know — as deeply as my brain stem knows how to draw breath — that this entity will unleash nuclear fire and I will be vaporized It’s an effort of will not to out myself as something more than human then and there, in pants-shitting terror.

 _[Fear not,]_ it broadcasts directly into my mind so loud my train of thought derails. A dozen alarms go off, stating that anti-telepathic defensive measures are hot and ready.

Oh? Oh. _Oh._

I fall on my bum and laugh. It’s a fucking _angel._ A genuine, eyes-on-wheels, wreathed-in-fire, abomination straight out of the Old Testament.

The group of robed figures begin making rounds with a cauldron on a cart, seemingly taking either donations or a fee. I extrude a heavy bar of pure gold bullion palmed out of sight in my hand.

I hop down beside Hanahana. “Are you all right?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” she asks.

I gesture vaguely in the direction of the angel.

“Oh? Oh! Right, you’ve never seen one of those before.”

“You have?” I ask, somewhat incredulously.

“Well, they sometimes pass overhead. Once, a smaller one — as wide as a few Odzen end-to-end — came with a trade caravan we met. I’ve been assured many times that they are harmless.”

I look back at the abomination, and notice an eye looking back at me. “I’ll take your hearsay for it.”

Before long, the donation jar comes around to us, and I drop the gold bar in.

One of the saurmans pauses reaches in, and picks up the gold. She pulls back her hood, and looks at me, plumage rising. She says something I don’t understand. One of the others leans in and leads her hand back in the pot. They all make a light bow towards me. I take off my hat and give a light bow in return.

“What was that?” Hanahana asks me.

“I don’t know, but it never hurts to be generous.”

The angel stays, and people start conversing once more, although the mingling has stopped.

Then the bell rings again, and one of the officials climbs to belfry and gives an address about something — it seems ceremonial. He turns towards the angel sitting outside the stone circle, and continues the ceremony for some time.

The angel is not a being I can draw conclusions from observing; whether it is placated or pleased or indifferent, I do not know. What I know is that power is building around us. Wisps of blue trace strange patterns in my peripheral vision, and little bits of red down seem to be floating on the wind. Careful observation tells me it is confined to the stone circle, too.

The energy keeps building and I grasp at straws for a way to measure _what it is for_ with only equipment that fits under my skin, or if I were to cannibalize my viscera for space. Part of my mind gathers the indirect evidence that the hundreds of people here don’t seem worried, so there’s _probably_ nothing untoward going on, but it’s a little hard to accept, emotionally.

With an effort of will I annihilate my fear, and replace it with unnatural acceptance. Then, there’s a drop in my stomach, and the angel vanishes before my eyes.

Replaced with clear sky.

I take a quick look around, seeing the stone circle has changed, the clouds overhead are gone, the wind smells faintly of ocean breeze. Beyond the stone circle we are situated on a small hilltop in an uneven stretch of wide valley. Lesser mountains rise up on either side; and in front, I glimpse forests on the inland horizon.

A road spirals the hill and joins a main path carved through this valley, full of traffic. The valley is conspicuously dotted with windmills.

“Look!” Hanahana calls out. She’s leaning around the corner of the cart to see almost directly behind us. I do the same, and behold it.

The broken landscape descend towards the open ocean, and far down, climbing the adjacent cliffs, encroaching on the hills of the valley, spilling onto white beaches, and flowing into the natural harbor beyond lie a metropolis. It’s large, by local standards, no doubt, but not any bigger than the old inner city of any European capital.

Notably it is fortified by a tall wall encircling the entire visible side. So far I can’t see what’s red about it. The walls are dotted with gates at regular intervals, and a sprawling shanty-town grows out from them. Aqueducts run down from the adjacent slopes, leading me to think of ancient Rome.

The mountains on either side are peculiar; in that they are rather low of height and rather close to water. Out in the bay beyond, I glimpse the mountain ridge curve around on both sides, as well as an incredibly faint silhouette of a monolith out at sea — visible only thanks to the size of Vegatia and my special eyes — leads me to conclude it is an impact crater. One large enough to have been a truly cataclysmic impact.

“I’ve never actually seen it, the Red City,” Hanahana says.

“Neither have I.”

She chuckles.

Gradually, the gathered travelers filter out of the stone circle. It’s slow; the road isn’t wide enough for two. I manage to weasel out early, and speed away down the narrow road to the boulevard, and the last leg of our approach.

Traffic here is busy, if not dense, and we’re drawing stares with our speed and lack of draft animals.

We pass dozens of wagons and carts, drawn by single animals and teams, both the dinosaur draft animals, but also the overgrown goats, actual horses, and some furred things that look in-between dinosaurs and mammals.

And goods: bales of hay, loads of timber, of grain, barrels, charcoal. There’s cattle being driven, of at least twelve different species. Whatever is going on here, Vegatia’s biosphere is somehow an impossible amalgamate of life.

The people are both human, saurman, salaman, a species of what looks like four foot tall racoon-like people that must be _Polatze_ , daimen, and another that looks like proto-dinosaur interpretation of kangaroos that by their puffy cheeks and the method of exclusion must be _Guadals,_ or if you will, orman.

Population wise, saurmans seem to dominate, humans are a distant third. Among humans along, who grab my attention due to obvious bias, there’s a wide range of diversity as well: Hanahana and her kin has several Caucasian markers, but I see features spanning the breath of human genetics in the crowds on the roads. Clothing ranges from practical to impossibly fancy; but utterly devoid of the markers of mass-production.

The road cuts between fields and passes by military outposts manned by uniformed militias carrying crossbows and quivers of bolts with red feather fletching. Saurmans, some ormans.

We reach the shanty-town, which is unlike modern day earth in that plywood and corrugated galvanized iron seemingly hasn’t been invented yet. It’s built from scrap planks, mud, uncut stones, and thatched with anything but good reeds. It’s bustling with people, pests, and strays, in various stages of disease and malnourishment. Filthy children play in the narrow streets that shoot off from this main road into the city, orman, saurman, diaman, human, salaman. Poverty leaves little time for prejudice it seems.

Before the main gate lies a plaza full of carts stopped for customs inspections. The same uniformed militia with the red feather insignias and fletchings go from wagon to cart, taking statements and tolls from every inbound vehicle.

The queueing time long enough plaza is also a bustle of day laborers running to and fro, offering their services — water for the animals, washing mud and dust off the wheels. Red-light windshield wipers.

Nobody approaches us, likely on account of our strange conveyance.

Finally, our turn comes, and a trio of uniformed saurmen come around to us, all men. The leader-looking one inclines his head, and a little creature crawls out from under his collar. It looks at first blush like a red songbird, only instead of a beak it has a cycloptic eye that glows faintly blue. It hops out to perch on the record book he’s carrying, and spreads its wings into a circle — almost like a parabolic dish.

He begins speaking, and his voice emanates from the minute angel. “Welcome to the Red City. Hallowed be the Lady.”

I look at Hanahana, who shrugs.

“Forgive me, officer,” I say. “I am foreign and do not know the proper response to that greeting. I do not wish to offend.”

His expression remains the same. “One replies ‘and her host’ but I am not here for etiquette. Purpose of your stay, business or pleasure?”

“Business,” I reply.

“This conveyance, it is sorcery?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a sorcerer?”

“I make my trade crafting sorcerous objects. I do not cast spells. My wife is a shaman of some skill.”

He notes that down. “In order to practice sorcery in the city you will need proper licensing. This is available for a fee at appropriate offices inside. Are you carrying any weapons other than knives no longer than a cubit?”

“Yes.”

“Weapons are not permitted in the city without licensing. You will have to surrender them for confiscation and once you have a permit you can request their return.”

I nod. “Hanahana, fetch the armament chest.” I twirl my staff and hand it to one of the junior officers, who wraps it in a sheet. Hanahana enters the wagon and under my mental direction, hauls forth the heavy chest. “Officer, this chest contains dangerous items; it must not be opened by anyone but myself.”

He looks up at me. “It is policy never to tamper with confiscated weaponry. If you had not delivered it to us in a chest, we would have provided you with one.”

There’s something in his expression. It’s a lie that there’s dangerous items in the chest; it disassembled firearms. Did he detect my lie?

He writes down something, switches to a red quill to sign it, then hands a note to me. “This is your notice of confiscation. You will need it to reclaim your items.”

Once I have it in my hand, I _feel_ this document’s purpose. A certainty presents itself — duly quarantined by my artificial mind as a potential subversion of normal thought — that this note is indeed what is advertised, that it links me, him, and through the power vested in him, the _city_ in a legally binding contract.

Interesting.

I take the chest by a handle in one hand and lowers it to the ground without leaving my seat. The other junior officer attempts to lift it, but finds it too heavy, opting to drag it with considerable difficulty.

“Any exotic fish, animals, or growths?”

“No.”

“Any goods besides personal property to declare?”

“I have precious metals, which I intend to exchange for local currency.”

“Mind if we take a look inside your wagon?”

“May I ask why?”

“Formality.” He notes something down. “I will not be necessary. If you do not have local currency to pay toll, I can call a money changer.”

I nod. He gives a wave in the direction of a nearby tent office.

“One question,” I say.

“Ask.”

“Is it possible to obtain a translator angel?” I point to his.

“They can be purchased in the temples inside.”

An elderly-looking saurman woman clad in robes comes over with a set of balanced scales — two pans suspended from either end of a rod, with a hook in the middle to hang from a finger. I pay her a gold bar no bigger than my pinky; she examines it with a touch stone, then weighs it against her belt of reference weights. From a pocket in her robes, she counts out a number of oblong bronze coins in two different denominations, and hands them to the officer. He takes a few, and hands the rest back to me.

The larger ones have a fine gold thread inlaid into the face. The smaller ones are almost stick-shaped.

“Enjoy your stay,” he says, and takes out a short red feather quill, signs a leaflet with it, and hands it to me.

As they leave, Hanahana leans over. “I think you got fleeced,” she says quietly.

“Good for them,” I say.


	16. Every City is the Ugliest City In the World

The main gate itself requires a moment of appreciation. It consists of five pointed arches side-by-side, each going up six metres, and each just as wide. The wall it pass through is so deep there’s two sets of gates. The gates themselves are thick timber entirely covered in riveted iron on the outwards-facing side.

The wall itself is even more impressive, reaching a full ten meters up, crowned with battlements, built from large stones. I boggle at how it was constructed given the technology level I’ve witnessed so far.

Before we can make significant progress towards the gate, we’re approached by a human man. His coat is frayed and his beard is unkempt, his hair is greying, and his skin is deep tan, weather-beaten. Instead of a left hand, he has a hook.

“Honored ladies, I couldn’t help but overhear that you speak the northern nomad’s tongue.”

“We do,” I say.

“Aye, it is good to hear; my mother tongue. You seem foreign to the Red City; perhaps I can lend my aid as a guide? I know the city well.”

“We could use a guide,” I say. I select the largest coin among the ones I got from the money changer. “I have no idea if this is too generous,” I say and toss it to him. He catches it somewhat awkwardly with his right hand. Left-handed?

“Thank you kindly, it is exceedingly generous in fact; though perhaps you wish to take it back—”

“Keep it, you need it more than me. I am Takall, motherless; this is Hanahana, daughter of Annanna.”

“I am Zazzuwa, son of Sehuzzi.”

Hanahana starts. “Zazzuwa? Mala’s boy?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Do I know you?”

“I—” Hanahana begins.

 _[Lie,]_ I command her.

“I do believe my mother was your midwife — your mother, daughter of Azmassiski? I’m from the tribe of Ko. It’s good to meet someone from our sister tribe — it has been an age since our people met!”

A gloom falls over his face. “Ah, yes. Sadly the tribe of Isha is no more. Most of us fell to consumption one winter. That is why it has”

“When was this?”

“Almost two decades ago. Myself and the other survivors came to the city to make new lives. The tribe of Lu is no more.”

“My condolences,” I say. “And apologies for my wife bringing up a dark memory.”

He shakes his head. “I’ve worse more recent memories.”

I gesture to the platform behind the bench. “Hop up. We need to go to the money changers. I have gold, but no coin. Then accommodations, then —” I look up at the sun “— perhaps lunch.”

“The inner districts are more easily navigable by foot,” Zazzuwa explains. “There’s garage services near the wall, that take pay by the bell, day, or week. Depending on your budget for accommodation and food, I know who to ask for the best places.”

The traffic jam eases up in front of us, and I move us along. Under Zazzuwa’s guidance, we turn right at the earliest opportunity, following a less populated side street. The wall looms over us, casting a long shadow in against the afternoon sun — the open sea lies to the east, the city wall to the west.

The buildings here are half-timbered with jettied upper floors. The timbers are painted ochre, and the stones in between are chalk white; this color scheme appears so consistently I can only imagine it is planned. Traffic is light, and consists mostly of pedestrians. We pass under signs advertising in pictograms with some sort of complex ideographic script for text. Soon, the houses up against the wall give way to open lots with a mishmash of different lean-to and stables against the wall itself, housing dozens upon dozens of carts, wagons, and animals. Zazzuwa smartly steers us past the first dozen or so establishments, onto the cheaper ones further from the gate.

“This one,” he says. “He’s reliable, a little more expensive, but better security. Not to be presumptuous, but I thought your fancy wagon might contain valuables.”

“Good thinking,” I say. “Do I have enough here —” I pick the remaining change out of my pocket “— for, say three days?”

“At least two. Allow me to negotiate?” he says.

I hand him the coins and he hops down. The proprietor is a male orman, and while Zazzuwa greets him in whatever _lingua franca_ is used in the Red City, I get a better look at this _Guadal_.

Guadals are on average taller than humans, with slightly protruding jaws and nose and meaty lips, and roomy cheeks, evocative of say, bulldogs — hangier, wrinklier cheeks being a male secondary sexual characteristic. Their ears are small and placed high, and their eyes look small set deep under a prominent brow ridge.

They have a whole-body covering of almost vestigial fur, and stand with digitigrade feet on long tarsals and short calves; my anatomical encyclopedia informs me of the elastic tendon structure therein, making them excellent at running and lifting heavy loads, aided by a meaty tail for balance. A barrel-shaped rib cage, thickened cervical vertebrates, and a layer of cartilage over the abdomen and pelvic area make _Guadals_ very resilient to physical trauma.

As they speak, he occasionally emotes by momentarily inflating his cheeks. He glances our way, and I wave and smile. He smiles back, and it strikes me how every species’ teeth look the same — it’s all flat incisors, feeble canines, and relatively small molars crammed into slightly too little jaw space, in a jaw itself weakened by trading space taken up by jaw muscle for increased brain volume.

It makes sense too: once you start hunting with tools and cooking your food, the teeth loose much of their importance — contrary to popular belief, predators don’t have pointy teeth because they eat meat, but because they use their teeth for _killing,_ which makes it sensible to have a mouth full of murder weapons.

The negotiation ends, money changes hands, and I’m waved over. Empowering the propulsion spell, I slowly roll into the lot — there’s no system of booths or parking spaces, just haphazard placement of wagons and carts. I maneuver into a good spot best as I can.

I send Hanahana in after some things — a single bag of holding, really — while I begin activating the magical security measures: rudimentary but reliable wards of my own devising, replicating the functionality of a car alarm: intruder detection, noise, light, and as an added bonus barring the doors and windows. If someone is willing to take an ax to the door, they can have what’s inside.

Zazzuwa returns and stands around by the side of the wagon, almost meekly. He turns out, almost scouting the area, almost standing guard.

“Are you a military man, Zazzuwa?”

“Not any more, madam.”

Hanahana returns and hands me the large faux-leather bag. I sling it over my shoulder, hop off the wagon, and hold out a hand for Hanahana, who daintily takes it and follows. She puts her hand in the hock of my elbow.

“How far to the financial district?” Hanahana asks.

“Nary a ways; there is actually two. The greater one by the docks is two _parasang_ or so, but the lesser one which services the land traffic is right nearby.”

With both legs on the ground, I get an appreciation for the cobbles underfoot. We step over a revolting, deep gutter in the center of the road, thankfully partially covered by narrow stones, and Zazzuwa leads us into an alley.

It’s narrow and dark, with a strip of blue sky overhead, but remarkably free of refuse. It’s a passage between streets, first, and anything else second. We exit into a bustling street, delineating between the squatter buildings near the wall and what appears to be a residential district.

The buildings loom high, up to five storeys, without any overhang. The ground floors are beset in shops open to the street between the supporting columns and walls. It feels almost modern, but it takes but a look on the people going about to see that this is not an upscale neighborhood. For one, even assuming four occupants per condo, the population density is immense. Nobody is dressed fancy, beggars are milling around the street corners, the open sewer in the middle of the street is much the same.

Zazzuwa gestures us along down the street, and down another alley, this one ripe with refuse. I spy unfamiliar pest animals skittering among the garbage. Hand-sized feather-clad biped thingies, and a pigeon-sized flying insects roosting on the cornices.

We pass another street exactly like it. And another. It takes me by surprise how quickly I get accustomed to the fact that only an eighth of the pedestrians we pass are human. Ormans are tall than humans, but both have upright stances and relatively large statures that lets them stick out in any crowd.

This is contrasted with the much more common stoop and swishing tails of saurmans who even then dwarf the diminutive daimans, who stoop as well, and salamans who do not, and are the smallest overall.

I spy a trio of red-clad, feather-adorned, crossbow-armed male saurmans, calmly patrolling the busy street, and I can’t help but begin to wonder what sort of racial tensions reside here.

It’s too much to merely observe from the street level; I desperately yearn to release a swarm of drones and look at everything from every angle. Both to satiate my hunger for observation, and to achieve a vantage point suitable to crowd dynamic threat analysis.

If the stories of my old life have told me anything, it is that uppity, wealthy-looking people with secret identities tend to get into trouble through no fault of their own. Not that I am expecting _because_ it would fit the story it; this is after all reality and not a story, but it sits in the back of my mind as a plausible development of affairs.

“You seem tense?” Hanahana says to me quietly.

“I’ve a dreadful premonition,” I murmur back.


	17. Gold and Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: violence, fighting, lots of methodically inflicted physical injury

We reach a small open square, populated by a crowd rife with red-clad police. The dense booths are staffed by saurman women in dignified dress, conversing with opulently dressed clientele, operating scales, counting coinage, scratching fine metals against touchstones. Each stall bears a sign painted in that ideographic script, and with the same sigil adorning each.

“What is that sigil?” I ask Zazzuwa.

“That is the sign of the Accounting Guild. All these money changers are accredited therewith.”

I stride forward, past Zazzuwa, picking out a booth I just saw conduct a transaction exchanging bullion metal for coin. The woman behind the counter polishes her touchstone with a cloth, and the little red bird-like translator cyclops on her counter turns to me and unfurls its wings.

“Greetings; Hallowed be the Lady,” I say. “I wish to exchange a substantial amount of gold for coinage.”

She makes a noise I cannot quite identify the meaning of, but suspect to be overbearing. “And her host. Allow me to inspect your gold, human, and I can give you a fair price.”

I pull a finger-sized gold bar with rounded corners from my bag and place it on the table, standing.

The plume on her bare shoulders rise a little. “What grade of purity is this?”

“Completely pure.”

She nods. “Is this all you have?”

“It’s but a sample,” I say.

She reaches for a drawer and takes from it a gold ring. Rubbing it on her touchstone, and then my sample next to it, she holds it up to the light. “Indeed; this is very high grade.” She places it on the scales, and I hold up a finger. From a pocket I draw a marble, and place it next to the scales.

“Pardon?” she asks.

“Dishonest merchants sometimes have special scales and slanted tables. You are honest.”

She looks perplexed. “I am not sure if you are purposefully insulting me; I am an accredited guild member.”

I smile. “Forgive me, I am but a travelling merchant. I have been deceived one too many times.”

She shakes her head, and I see her bite back some remark which the translator angel would surely have translated. With a steady hand she operates the scale. “The going rate for pure gold is nine Quills and six Doshes per grain of gold; this is three-score-and-six grains, so you are owed…” She takes out an abbacus, and performs some figuring. “Score and eleven Talents, and seven Doshes. I do not have that much coin on hand, but I will write you a promissory note, and you can claim it at a guild house.”

“Can you provide me with part of the money, say, a tenth of the coin you have on hand?” I ask.

“Of course.”

She counts out two talents — ornate circular bronze coins with small gold grains in the center — and five quills — the large bronze coins with gold thread I’ve already seen, stamped with a feather. The promissory note is pre-written, and she fills out the amount — I presume — signs it with a red quill, and seals it with a wax seal.

“How many kinds of coin do the money changers here peddle?” I ask.

“Oh, dozens.”

“Then why these talents, quills, and doshes? Are they the most common?”

“They are minted in honor of our Red Lady, by the Templar Mint. It is a coin in good standing due to being faced in gold.”

“No silver?”

Her eyes widen. “ _Silver?_ No, that is much too scarce and precious for coinage.”

My train of thought skips a beat. “Silver is _more_ precious than gold?”

“Aye.”

“Zazzuwa,” I say, “later, can you take us to the— is there such thing as a Miner’s guild?”

“There is, ma’am.”

There’s something _very_ wrong in the world if this by no means primitive civilization hasn’t figured out how to extract vastly more silver than gold from the earth. Assuming, at least, that Vegatia has a mineral distribution alike that of Earth.

I sweep up the coins and accept the document — more indecipherable ideograms. Again, that feeling of certainty that I am owed twenty-nine talents and five quills.

“Thank you,” I say.

I turn abruptly, and proceed across the market with long strides; Hanahana and Zazzuwa have to hurry to follow. I stop at another booth, staffed by two saurman women.

“What’s the going rate for gold per grainweight?” I ask.

They exchange glances. “Nine Quills —” one says. “Six doshes?” the other adds.

I bow. “Zazzuwa, I’d like to redeem this promissory note.”

He points. At the end of the square lies an ostentatious building with a large accountants’ guild sigil. I can’t believe I’ve missed it — limewashed in ochre and beset with colorful banners.

“So what was all that?” Hanahana asks. “I’m not well versed in the intricacies of money, and you don’t usually act that way.”

I smile mischievously. “I’m a very wealthy and eccentric foreigner.”

We enter the guild hall, and I’m struck with the colonnades that line the room, supporting a second floor of balconies the massive vault door guarded by six armed, red-clad officers, two of which are orman. It occurs to me that I haven’t seen a single woman in the militia uniform.

Dozens of people — almost solely saurman women — come and go, and the floor is dominated by what appear to be six bank tellers’ stations. It smells like chalk, ink, parchment, and copper catalyzing skin fat into foul metallic odor.

I head up to one, and hand over my promissory note. Her eyes widen as she reads it, and she calls over a supervisor. They exchange some words — all of this is without the presence of a translator angel.

“Ah! Takall! Hanahana!”

We turn, and see Elzok, the saurman merchant. “Elzok, what fortune!” I say jovially.

“What are you seeing the book-keep guild for?”

The supervisor returns with a lockbox of wood and iron, opens it, and begins counting out the apparently obscene amount of money I am owed.

“That,” I reply.

Elzok laughs. “I am here for mere book-keeping, unfortunately. Good fortune on your future endeavors.”

“And to you.”

I sweep my gains off the table with a flourish, take a bow to the supervisor, and we take out leave, stepping into the bustling street. “Zazzuwa, I’d like to rent some half-way permanent accommodation with full amenities. Where can we find that?”

“For a talent or two, you can get a fine, spacious first-floor apartment,” he says. “In the inner city, you’d also find well-stocked market squares and shops with many fine foods and goods.”

“And a temple?” I ask.

“For an Angel of Tongues? That is on the way.”

We walk in silence, arm in arm, following our guide, and Hanahana initiates a private conversation. She squeezes my arm, and I hear in her mind: _[My god?]_

_[Yes?]_

_[We are being followed, I think]_

_[Don’t look. How do you know?]_

_[I haven’t. I can tell when people are looking; there’s a certain pair of eyes that keeps returning to us.]_

A neat skill I need to acquire. If I had my drones and crowd metrics, I’d have spotted this already.

 _[We’ll handle it,]_ I reassure her. _[Do you think it’s Zazzuwa’s doing?]_

_[He’s tense, but not with anticipation.]_

_[Let’s see where this goes. I can protect us.]_

She squeezes my arm. _[I’m not afraid. I have you.]_

Zazzuwa stops to let a carriage pass in front of him. He looks back at us, and I see his eyes sweep the crowd behind us. I spy a hint of annoyance and fear on his face.

“This way if you will, ladies.”

 _[He’s noticed them; he’s trying to get us out of harms way,]_ I say.

_[Agreed.]_

I pull up to him. “Do we make a run for it?” I ask quietly.

He turns his head to me. “Pardon?”

“I too noticed we’re being followed; do you know by whom?”

“I’ve got guesses. You aren’t subtle with your wealth,” he mutters.

I glance about without turning my head. “Shall we locate a patrol?”

He shakes his head. “Hereabouts they are corrupt; they allow bad men to take ‘protection money’ since for a certain interpretation of city ordinance, it isn’t actually illegal. Those that don’t have ‘accidents,’ at their hands. Even the Accountant’s Guild pays it.”

Protection rackets. How charming.

“And those that resist?”

“Those who openly opposes the Night Guilds are often found floating in the harbor.”

He leads us into an alley, of narrow uneven cobbles strewn with dead pests and laid in shadow. There he sets into a run. I follow, almost dragging Hanahana behind me. Just as we reach the mouth at other end, a two human men step out in our way. They are armed with canes in hands, and daggers on their belts.

“Zazzuwa! Old pal!” one of them says. He’s dressed in workman’s clothes and a colorful hat. There’s a translator angel on his shoulder.

I glance behind us, and see two more coming up behind us, cutting off our escape.

“I’m done with you; Pawpaw gave me permission to leave, debts paid in full,” Zazzuwa says.

“Our business is not with you; it’s with these lovely ladies and their precious personal property.” He turns to me, stepping closer. “My ladies, this is a dangerous city. For a small fee, we can protect you much better than this one-armed oaf.”

I giggle. “My good man, I do not doubt your abilities, but I don’t rely on Zazzuwa, son of Sehuzzi for protection.” I reach into my pocket and take out a talent, rolling it across my fingers. “Here’s a tip. Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

_(To think I would ever get to use that line in earnest.)_

To his credit, he doesn’t take his eyes off me to look at the Talent I am manipulating. I flick it to him, and step beside him. His cane comes up, gently tapping me on the chest. “I’m afraid your protection is going to cost more than a thirty-first of your spending money.”

“Zazzuwa,” I say. “Protect Hanahana for me.”

“Zazzuwa, stay out of this. Remember your Captain.”

A hostage?

I look to Zazzuwa. “Whomever they are threatening, I promise I’ll protect them.”

The little angel looks at me and hums a bright tone, like a little silver flute. Was that significant?

Zazzuwa turns towards Hanahana, ushering her up against the wall.

“Ah shit,” the leader says.

He draws back his cane for a strike, and I watch him move as if through molasses. I reach forward and catch his wrist. His hand goes for his knife in slow-motion, and is pre-empted by my knee meeting his diaphragm. He doubles over, retching before his knees hit the cobbles.

I’m not even moving faster than baseline humans, I’m just reacting in a fraction of the time.

His companion comes at me with his dagger, and I sidestep his thrust, grabbing his arm and dislocating his extended elbow with a palm strike, twisting his already damaged arm over my back, and throwing him onto the pavement.

Still coughing and spitting, the leader has his knife out, and I reward his courage and tenacity by a kick in the jaw, hard enough to fracture bone, but not shatter it.

Zazzuwa to his credit is fending off the other two, but is just a man. He takes a cane strike to his stomach, and a dagger to his stump arm, and ends up against the wall, dropping his own knife.

The one not occupied with Zazzuwa, has noticed that I’ve taken out his two colleagues without breaking a sweat, and is backing off somewhat.

With quick strides, I’m upon the thug pinning Zazzuwa, and I deliver a heel kick to his kidney, hard enough to make him loose consciousness from the sudden upset to blood pressure.

The last of the crew attempts to dart past me, and I reach for him, catching his sleeve. With remarkable dexterity he slips out of his jacket and reaches Hanahana. He grabs her by the arm and points to her with his dagger. “Stop!” he yells.

He’s young. A sneer reaches my face.

“A proposition,” I say, holding up my hands. “If you hurt my wife, I will tear the still beating heart from your chest and let you watch as it stops beating. If you don’t, I’m prepared to pay you thirty Talents for her safe return.”

“Pay up, then.”

I take out my money purse, “here it is.”

He’s sweating, shaking, terror painted on his face. “Toss it here!”

“As you will,” I say, and unleash the full strength and speed of my synthetic frame. With an underhand snap of the wrist, I put my leather purse containing thirty heavy bronze coins in his face with the force of a good baseball pitch. To his credit he doesn’t entirely loose grip of his weapon or Hanahana, but winces long enough for me to close the distance before he can react.

I close my hand around his face and my momentum brings it to the wall behind, hard enough to sound ugly.


	18. Reparations Paid in Full

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw: fighting, forceful administration of drugs

All that violence took less than six seconds, discounting the talking — right on the money if you ask Gary Gygax. “Zazzuwa, are you badly hurt?”

“I’m bleeding,” he says. He’s sitting by the wall, holding the wound.

I steer Hanahana to him, tossing her controlled hand a tourniquet from the bag, and she begins the work of stopping the bleeding.

I being the work of caring for the others. The leader remains silent, but glares at me, as I come up to him. I take him by his collar and sits him against the wall. His breathing is stable. I poke his already bruised jaw, and he winces.

“Your jaw is likely broken. It will be painful for a while. Favor soups and soft foods, avoid biting down hard, and avoid getting hit in the face again for a month or two. You’ll be fine.”

I put a talent in his hands, and pat his other cheek. “That’s for you.” Then I take out three talents. “This is for your boss. Tell him not to mess with me, yeah?”

Lying on the ground, whimpering, cradling his injured elbow is the next guy. I lift him as well, setting him against the wall. I take out scissors. “I’m going to remove your coat and shirt. You don’t want to be taking those off tonight.” Then I cut his sleeve open.

Taking a hold of his upper arm with one hand, and his lower arm with the other, I wish I had more hands. “I’m going to relocate your elbow on the count of three. One—” I grasp hard, and pull hard. He’s tense from the pain, and my fingers bruise his skin as I adduct his ulna. He yelps, and groans.

I put his arm in to a sling and give him two talents. I went way too hard on him — this injury will stay with him for the rest of his life. “It will hurt, badly, for a long time. Keep it in rest for at least a week. Once the pain subsides it’s important you begin using your arm again, to regain its strength.”

Next, the fainter. I wave a bottle of smelling salts under his nose, and his eyes flutter open. He winces immediately, his hand going to his back. “You’ll be pissing blood for a little while. Avoid drinking alcohol, eating salty foods, or overmuch meat for a week. Drink plenty of water. You’ll be fine.” He gets a talent as well.

Last, the youngster. He’s sitting, clutching the back of his head, bleeding freely onto his pants.

“Hey,” I say. “Let’s fix that nose.”

He looks at me with fear in his eyes. “I’m not here to hurt you,” I say. “Sit still, or you will have a crooked nose the rest of your life.” With gentle hands, I take his bent nose between my fingers, and he winces. With a quick motion, I set the bone back in place, and he hisses in pain.

I give him a rag for the bleeding, and in my back hand, out of view, I fashion a nasal splint that attaches with strings. “This will protect your nose a bit, help it grow right,” I say as I tie it around his head. “You’ve hit your head hard. You may feel dizzy, nauseous, or very tired. Go home and rest, avoid sun light for a few days, and try not to fall asleep except at night. With time and luck you’ll recover. I’m sorry.” He gets two talents as well.

With quick strides, I take Zazzuwa and Hanahana down the alley. “How do you feel?” I ask Zazzuwa.

“I’ve had worse,” he mutters.

I take out a spray can of antiseptic, anaesthetic, wound-sealing foam. A few decades ahead of contemporary western emergency medicine – it even absorbs harmlessly into the body as the wound heals, and provides transport for any fluid trapped in the wound. I undo the tourniquet, and definitively stop the bleeding, before bandaging it.

Zazzuwa is thoroughly impressed, even as he remains quiet. I extrude a pill in my hand: painkillers, stimulants, glucose and cherry flavoring. “Chew this, It’ll give you energy.”

He takes it from me, popping it in his mouth unquestioningly.

“Now, where is this ‘Captain’ they are threatening?”

“We share a flat; he was my commanding officer when we were in the army. He’s — he can’t walk. They’ll kill him to get to me.”

I nod. “Is it far?”

“A _parasang_.”

An sixth of a day’s march. “You’re in no condition to run that far,” I state. Then I unfold — under my coat, out of sight — two items. One is a VR headset that looks like a blindfold, based on direct retinal projection rather than screens. The other is an ocular telepresence device that fits on my hat and looks like a fancy accessory.

“This will allow you to see as if your head was on my hat,” I explain. “I can hear what you say as well. You tell me where to go, I run. You’ll be effectively blind while you wear it, so Hanahana will guide you to a safe location.”

I put the headset on Zazzuwa, and it activates. The ocular telepresence device mirrors his eye and head movement, without outwards indication.

“This is quite something — why do I look so strange?” he asks.

“You’re used to mirrors, this isn’t a mirror.” I help him to his feet, and Hanahana takes him by the arm.

Zazzuwa lifts the blindfold. “We can just slip into a stairwell, ma’am — just out on the street.”

Hanahana looks at me and I nod. It’s going to be a challenge to juggle myself, Hanahana, and the telepresence link at once. I pull my boots off my feet, stowing them in the bag before handing it to Hanahana, then tie my skirt up.

“Put on the blindfold.” He does. “Left or right?”

“Left.”

Under my guidance Hanahana guides Zazzuwa in the opposite direction, and I take off running, barefoot. Taking care not to run utterly inhumanly fast, I quickly reach the end of the alley. “ _Left,_ ” Zazzuwas’ voice sounds in my ear.

I take a left up the busy street, weaving between the many pedestrians, drawing stares. “ _You need to go down that next alley — then the next street splits and…_ ” I’m not quite vaulting over carts in the way, but I might if there were any.

(Hanahana takes Zazzuwa out onto the street and beelines for the stairwell. They head up to the highest floor, and I direct Hanahana to take out a quarterstaff.)

A trio of militia officers notices my running and sets into a light jog to intercept me. Fortunately the leader of them, an orman, for a change, carries another translator angel. I obligingly stop at a corner, and they take up position in front of me to block me.

“Where are you going so fast?”

“I’m in a hurry, lives may be at stake,” I reply.

“That’s for _us_ to decide, ma’am,” he says with what passes for a confident smirk among ormans.

I look him dead in the eye, and with a quick dip in my purse, flick a Talent in his face. He scrambles to catch it, and I take the moment of confusion to take a running leap up the wall by the corner, gaining enough height to kick off and sail over their heads, landing in a run.

“Hey! Stop!” one of them yell behind me.

“ _Impressive jump, that._ ”

“Thanks,” I mutter.

Soon enough I reach the next alley Zazzuwa wants me down, and speed up as I enter it; easily surpassing human limits for that short empty stretch between streets. As I exit, I recognize again the squat non-residential buildings of the district near the wall. Less traffic means I can run faster. My lungs fill with air, almost in a caricature of labored breathing; my artificial muscles are barely exerting themselves. The balls of my feet strike uneven cobbles six times per heartbeat.

“ _Right, here._ ” I take a right as the street diverges in two, down the less maintained path. Soon the commercial buildings again give way for slum apartment blocks, and I spend a few milliseconds noticing how everyone here look substantially poorer, and how there’s far less saurmans here.

Another shortcut through an alley, this one so ripe with refuse I take to running on the walls.

“ _There, sixth floor._ ”

I dart in the limewashed gray building; wood and mud brick. I take the stairs three steps at a time, carefully rushing past a mother with a small child. The steps creak, and are worn in the middle, and it smells faintly like piss. So far, not a gangster in sight.

“ _That door there. Shit._ ”

Reaching the last level, I see the door ajar. I waste no time rushing in, finding a malodorous dwelling inside. A single room, beds in one corner, a chest in another; a table pulled right up to the bed. The blinds are open, letting in the sun and fresh air.

In bed lies another human man, covered by a blanket, propped up on his elbows. His skin is deeply dark, and his hair and beard is as unkempt as Zazzuwa’s. His strength has wasted away due to a sedentary life. In the middle of the room sits a man clearly identified as the hostage taker by his dress similar to our earlier assailants, and by brandishing his dagger.

He turns to look at me, and surprise spreads across his face. He begins standing up, but I am already upon him by the time he’s even point the knife at me. A swift chop at his hand causes him to drop the knife, and I take him by the collar, putting him hard on the floor with a leg sweep, knocking the air out of him.

He scrambles away and up, grabbing his dagger again and training it on me. As an answer to that, I pick up the sturdy chair he was sitting on, and throw it at him hard enough to send him sprawling again.

In three quick strides, I’m upon him, stepping on his knife hand to make him drop it again. I take him by the back of his jacket, dragging him into the stairwell, and unceremoniously dumping him on his ass down the first flight of stairs. Maybe a broken tailbone, maybe just some bruises. Either way he is on the floor again, three for three.

Stepping back inside, I shut the door and bar it with the chair. “Hi!” I say to Zazzuwa’s captain.

“ _He doesn’t speak Nothern Nomad’s Tongue._ ”

I turn on the speaker in the hat band. “Then speak for me.”

He does, and I stand there, slightly awkwardly. The captain, to his credit takes it in stride. Or does he? It’s almost like the man isn’t fazed by _anything._ No fear at presumably being thrown out the window, no surprise at seeing a handsome stranger come to his rescue, no apparent motivation.

Depression?

“ _What do we do now?_ ” Zazzuwa asks me.

“He comes with us,” I say. “And so do you. Welcome to my employ. You get room and board, pay, disability benefits, and a health plan.”

“ _What’s a health plan?_ ”

“I’m a doctor. Explain it to him,” I say.

As he does, I begin rummaging through the chest for clothes, finding pants, shirt and coat in the captain’s size. Turning, I see the captain have rolled over on his side, turning away from me.

“What’s his name?”

“ _Alibek._ ”

I throw the clothes on the bed, and grab a hold of Alibek’s shoulder. “Alibek, you need to come with me.”

He mutters something.

I grab hold of his wrist, and he doesn’t resist much. I conjure a syringe with a cocktail of fast-acting serotonin reuptake inhibitors, receptor modulators of same, adrenaline, amphetamine-like compounds, and depression-impacting mild hallucinogenics.

He doesn’t react as I sterilize the injection area, but does react when I jab it into his arm, turning over and cursing me out.

The stimulants raise his heart rate in seconds, and I grab the shirt and pants, throwing them before him. He glares at me, but slowly reaches for the shirt. Satisfied with his progress, I step outside; and out of view I extrude a crude folding wheelchair, which I sling over my shoulder in a strap.

I return, to see Alibek struggling with getting his pants on his paralyzed legs. He wears no underwear, his body odor is _strong._ “You need a bath.”

Eventually he gets dressed, and I pick him up in a bridal carry. He’s light, stick-thin. I rush us down the stairs, and thankfully no gangsters are coming up the stairs. As we reach street level, I unfold the wheel chair and sit Alibek in it.

With long strides, I make my way back to Hanahana and Zazzuwa


	19. Get Up

Zazzuwa and Hanahana has thankfully remained safe. Zazzuwa and Alibek catch up, briefly, and he explains how I am filthy rich and generally amazing in a fistfight — or so I presume. I let Hanahana roll Alibek, freeing me to walk in front.

He continues the work I hired him for.

One the way to a nicer district, where Zazzuwa assures me there will be spacious lodgings for rent, we pass a smaller temple, wedged in between four storey residential buildings.

It’s simple of construction and adorned with a man-sized single red angel feather atop the pointed roof, which waves in the wind as if it cannot make up whether to be flame or plumage. Beside it lies squat two-storey building that might be living space for the faithful.

The inside of it is similarly unadorned, save for a bust of the Red Lady’s likeness. She’s saurman, and here depicted in glazed terracotta, with a strong jaw, and broad shoulder plumage. It’s very… Protestant. Up under the loft are rows of branches hosting a large number of varying-sized red angels.

A saurman clergywoman approaches us, dressed in a robe, with an embroidered red feather.

“What can I help you with?” she asks.

“I’d like to… Rent? Buy? One of _those_ —” I point to the translator angel on her shoulder.

“Of course,” she says. “Their will is to accompany the kind souls who donate to the church.”

“Do you take talents, quills and doshes?” I ask, “And how long will it accompany me?”

“Customary, the donation two quills and a dosh for good luck. It will stay by your side until you dismiss it or a year and a day has passed.”

I nod, and hand her a talent. It doesn’t seem like she has change on her.

She bows. “This is a very kind donation, ma’am.” She then turns and looks up to the loft, holding out a hand, and a small translator angel swoops down on dainty wings to land on it.

Holding out her hand to me, the little angel leaps onto my own outstretched hand.

“It will stay with you until tomorrow and a year after that, then it will return to Her host, and you will have to make another donation.”

I nod, and gingerly stroke the little creature’s back. “I’ve seen red writing quills” — the— _my_ little translator angel spreads its wings as I talk, turning to the clerk — “used to sign contracts. Do you have those as well?”

“Yes. Those we _sell._ ”

“I’d like to buy a dozen.”

She bows and heads up to the altar, returning soon after with a sheaf of red feathers. “They cost one Quill each; once they lose their color, they also lose the magic. They are good for a few dozen signatures, depending on the length of the document.”

I fork over another talent. “Keep the change.”

She bows, with her tail darting out to counter-balancing behind her. “Thank you kindly for your generosity, ma’am.”

I bow in return, and we take our leave.

Now equipped with a communicative shorthand my only detriment is that I cannot read the writing, and apparently the angel doesn’t help with that; or I just haven’t figured out the trick yet.

“Alibek,” I say. “I apologize for spiriting you away. I hope to make up for it.”

He doesn’t reply. Indeed he hasn’t talked much at all.

“He’s like that,” Zazzuwa says. “Not a talker.”

“Have you always been like that?” I ask, addressing the man himself, rather than carrying on a conversation with Zazzuwa.

“It’s been getting worse since we were honorably discharged.”

“For injuries in the line of duty, I assume?”

Zazzuwa nods, grimly.

“Loss of one’s mobility can change a man,” I say. “Let’s find a place to stay; we’ll need somewhere with accommodation — is it custom to co-habit with one’s servants?”

Zazzuwa looks puzzled for a moment. “Matrons’ Homes have servants’ quarters, always; a household always needs servants.”

“Then we shall find one for rent, and you and Alibek shall have the servants’ quarters.”

“But ma’am, we are not fit for servitude—”

“— And I have no need of servants,” I cut him off. “I’ve been on the road for weeks; I don’t intend to stop cooking my own food.”

My pet translator angel shivers. Did it detect my lie? There is something going on here. “It’s the only life I’ve known in this world,” I finish. Technically the truth.

We reach an inner-city district; the buildings here look both older, more ornate, and more sturdily built than the more plebeian quarters. The streets are evermore full of better dressed, yet less diverse crowds. Saurman ladies in flowing colored robes, and gents in sleek, dark coats and trousers. We stick out some.

“Might a renter not turn us away for our race in this part of town?” I ask, voicing my concerns.

“The landladies are all guild here in midtown,” Zazzuwa says. “Guild regulations prohibit turning away anyone with money; that’s what it means to be a guild.”

I lead us to the first and best apartment building; the ground floor is open to the street, hosting a street vendor selling boiled dumplings. We could use some lunch, but the apron-clad saurman gent probably doesn’t have change for a talent, and seven doshes isn’t likely to cut it.

The other thing in the ground floor level is a door with a small seal comprised of a few ideograms adorning it. “Landladies’ guild?”

Zazzuwa nods. I push open the door.

Behind a desk sits a saurman lady with greying shoulder plumage. “Good day,” I say. “I am in need of long-term housing, do you know anyone who can offer a rental Matron’s Home against an up-front payment of ten talents, negotiable?”

She looks almost offended until I mention the money. “Of course I would be happy to host you myself, but I am without vacancy. Try further down the street on the other side, by the cobbler.”

I take a bow, and we follow her direction to another landlady’s office, with another saurman landlady.

“I happen to have a second-floor vacancy, but I will have to insist on fifteen talents up-front; rent is four quills and a dosh, weekly.”

“Twelve talents,” I haggle.

“Thirteen.”

“Deal.” I take out my money purse, and pay her eighteen of my twenty-three talents, and five doshes. “Five weeks rent.”

She gets up and heads to her office’s lone shelf, drawing out a roll of parchment. “This is the contract.”

“I am not a reader of this script, care to explain to me the pertinent details?”

“You are not allowed to keep animals, or to cause damage to the rooms or nuisance to the other tenants. Lack of rent payment is grounds for eviction. Half the up-front payment will be refunded upon end of rental.”

Cute how simple that is, compared to Earth. It fits on two sides of a single page.

I sign; coins change hands; we ascend the stairs with me carrying Alibek. The apartment that is going to be our living space for the foreseeable future is no palace. The ceilings are low, the rooms are small, if multitudinous. There’s a front stairwell for the tenants, and a back one for the servants. The kitchen is a hearth, a counter, and a larder. The bedrooms are alcoves, with the master bedroom’s alcove cleverly sharing a wall with kitchen hearth. There’s no bedding.

There’s also a truly tiny study, and a dining room, with a single hallway connecting it all. The windows have two sets of blinds and no panes.

Within the confines of my bag-of-holding, lies a seed of my factory, and in the extra-dimensional space I unfold among other things an extrusion loom to provide us with some furnishings and finery.

I send Zazzuwa out for groceries and Hanahana into the courtyard for pails of water — this block has it’s own well dug in the yard, and I get a brief shiver as I recall what history books say about the Cholera pandemics of pre-sewer-system society.

I park Alibek by the front windows to lookout for trouble, and assemble a filtration device out of faux-wood, filling it with activated charcoal. I dope the filtered water with iodine, just to be sure, and find the microbial and chemical contamination to be within acceptable, if not exactly the standards of tap water back home on Earth.

Using the clean water, I scrub the floors, walls, even ceilings with harsh detergents; door frames, window blinds; everything gets cleansed. I recycle my wastewater through a different filter, several times. At the end of it, I can’t get the grey-brown colorants out of it without chemical treatment. I designate the house as shoes-off, moving Alibek to a different wheelchair with smaller wheels.

Hanahana gets the job of laying carpets and hanging drapes in warm colors. I get to work on building a rocket stove in the kitchen out of the bricks that made up the hearth. Open fire is much too inefficient. I’ve specifically asked Zazzuwa to refrain from buying firewood, and I fill the fuel basket with fine grey coke instead. I fire up and start boiling water.

A cooking pot, frying pan and water kettle of seasoned cast iron, sharp knives of good steel, glazed earthenware dishes and cups, fine soft beddings. In an afternoon we have a pleasant home.

I fit our bedrooms with teflon-lined chamberpots. To hell with fitting to the local the tech level on that front.

Hanahana starts cooking — she knows how without my guidance; all I need to help her with is the stove.

In the meantime I set up a tub in the dining room, and get to work on Zazzuwa and Alibek. They both get a hot soak and scrub, a new set of clothes, and a shave. I instruct them on the importance of hand-washing and show them the washbasins at both front and back entrances. I give them a quick foray into dental hygiene, too, before dinner is served.

We eat a meal of dark bread, hard cheese, and boiled root vegetables, wine and clean water to drink. It’s probably more than these poor sods have had in a month.

Alibek still isn’t eating much, which worries me some.

“Gentlemen, in addition to being a merchant and purveyor of items of power, I am a physician.”

“I guessed from the aftermath of the scuffle in the alley,” Zazzuwa says.

I nod. “While there isn’t much I can do for your missing hand, there’s a good chance I can make Alibek walk again.”

Zazzuwa snorts. “No way. We’ve heard that before. The army clerics couldn’t, and they channel the power of our Red Lady herself.”

I nod. “I’m not a cleric. My methods of healing are not magic. My medicine is founded on a complete understanding of the body’s tissues and fluids, and how all diseases work. Do you know why Alibek can’t walk?”

“He broke his back.”

I nod. “Specifically, since he is not pissing himself, the break happened not much above the pelvis. Inside the spine runs a channel full of nerve fibers, connecting the brain to the whole of the body, allowing the mind control of the muscles. If these are severed, paralysis is the result. I can stitch these together once more, allowing Alibek to walk again.”

I look to him. “It is not without its risks, but I have never had a patient die in my care. You will need crutches for a while, since your legs have wasted away from disuse.”

Alibek looks to me with a neutral expression. “Do whatever you want,” he replies.


	20. No Rest for the Divine

We clear the dining room, and I banish Hanahana and Zazzuwa to elsewhere in the house.

“You may have seen surgery before,” I say. “Yes? Wailing and gnashing of teeth, bloody knives and saws, festering wounds, men forever scarred in body and soul?”

He nods.

“Barbarism. Where I am from, patients are given medicines to dull the pain, make them sleep, and to prevent the wound from fouling. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I don’t care what you do,” he says. “Either I walk again, or I die. Both are an improvement in my eyes.”

I nod. “Still, you shouldn’t have to remember,” I say, and take a seat on an inverted chair. “I’ll make sure you wake up hale, or not at all.”

Alibek looks at me, stone-faced. I reach out and take his hand from his lap, and hold it in mine. “Pleasant as my ways are, they are still grisly. I think you’ve seen enough horrors, no?” I give it a squeeze.

I extrude a quickly-evaporating inhalatory hallucinagen in my lungs. “Breathe with me.” I inhale deeply and exhale. Alibek takes a moment before complying.

“You’re going to become very tired now,” I say.

Another breath in, out. The dose he’s getting is nowhere near enough for intoxication, but renders him slightly more suggestible.

“I know you have reservations, but you have nothing to worry about.”

Another breathing cycle. He mirrors my breathing now.

I get up, and slowly walk around his wheelchair, stroking his arm and cheek as I pass. He leans into it slightly.

I grab the handles on the back, and suddenly lean him backwards. “ _Sleep!_ ” I command. His eyes flutter closed.

“Listen to my voice,” I continue, “you are in my care, you are safe, and you will do as I say.”

I slowly sit him back up again, and repeat: “Listen to my voice, you are in my care, you are safe, and you will do as I say.”

I pass the perimeter of the room, running a hand over the walls and imbuing in them a temporary spell of silence, repeating the mantra a third time.

Barring the door, I get to work, covering the floor in machinery. A many-fingered appendage sterilizes his wrist and lays an IV, needle phasing through flesh; through it he receives ketamine for general anaesthesia and further antidepressant effect. A breathing tube snakes its way down his throat, and two dozen soft paws and hands lifts him from the wheelchair, undresses him gently, and flips him over.

I take blood for analysis and stem cells and grow spinal nerves in time-compression. A superconducting electromagnetic iris passes over him for an MRI, then pairs of pincers take X-Rays from multiple angles, netting me a thorough volumetric image of the injured lumbar spine. Signs of a complete severing of the spinal cord just above the TK nerves, scars on the vertebrae from a sharp implement.

With microscopic pincers on spidery fingers, I stitch his spine back together, and place a deep decoy incision over the area, which I lace with stem cells, stitch with silk thread and dress in sterile bandages.

Operation and deception completed, I pack up my factory once more, hang a proper IV drip with antibiotics and painkillers. I sterilize the dining table and make a bed for him on it, rigging him with a bio-monitor linked to my mind.

An oil lamp suspended from the ceiling provides illumination.

I enter the kitchen to find Zazzuwa and Hanahana sitting and chatting.

“ _Finally,_ ” Zazzuwa says. “Is— is he going to recover?”

I nod. “I’ll keep him in the dining room for now. You can stay with him, but I have him under observation.”

Zazzuwa gets up and immediately heads to the dining room.

“He told me the story of him and Alibek,” Hanahana says in a quiet voice. “They were in the excursion millitia together; officer and aide. They were sent to help a town in the provinces, only to find a mad Fae had subjugated the townsfolk. Zazzuwa lost his hand in saving Alibek after he lost the use of his legs.”

“What happened to the townsfolk and the Fae?”

“They were liberated afterwards by the paladins, the Fae is eternally bound to Our Lady for his crimes. I’m given to think this is what usually happens.”

A fire is burning in the rocket stove, and it is pleasantly warm.

“The stove is weird,” she notes. “It can’t burn slowly.”

I toss a lump of coke in. “If you burn coke slowly, it makes poisonous smoke,” I say. “The stones stay warm for a long time, and I’ll get up in the night to stoke it if it gets too cold.” Thank the stars there’s a chimney in the building; Hanahana has figured out the purpose of the section of metal pipe that slots in between the cooktop over the flames and the chimney opening in the ceiling.

She hops down from the counter and approaches me. She puts her hand on my shoulder for a little rub. “It’s late, my goddess, should we retire?”

I check in on Zazzuwa, who is sitting on a chair by Alibek, who has transitioned from general anaesthesia to sleeping. “You should go sleep in a bed,” I say. “He’s not going to recover quicker just because you sit there. I need you in good shape.”

He doesn’t move.

“Zazzuwa, go to bed,” I command.

He sighs. “Yes ma’am,” he says and rises, slipping past Hanahana in the hallway.

We check the doors, making sure they are barred, finally slip into our private chamber. It is furnished with a dresser, a divan, and a closet, and then of course the sleeping alcove. I light the oil lamp on the dresser with a mote of magic.

It’s been cold enough all day for us to keep our overcoats on, but withe the stove going in the kitchen, it’s quickly getting too warm. I take her coat and scarves, and hang my own jacket and hat.

“We’re not done with business yet,” I say.

Hanahana sets herself down on the divan, kicking off her boots and artfully crossing her bare legs. “What do you have in mind?”

“I need you to probe Alibek and Zazzuwa’s dreams. I need to know the contents of their character.”

She perks up with a grin. “At least you don’t only keep me around for my ass and tits. Come sit, close your eyes.”

We begin meditating and she slips into her shamanic trance, drawing me with.

_Zazzuwa is still tossing and turning._

I gave him something quickening that might not be out of his system.

_Ah. Alibek is sleeping, but you knew that._

We delve across a social connection, and find an empty mind in deep, drug-induced sleep. Hana begins her work, gradually teasing apart the connections and associations, skillfully.

He was once a good man. Ambitious, just, and handsome. He has not been so for a long time. Depression looms heavy over him, and resentment.

Resentment against Zazzuwa for being more able, towards an estranged wife for divorcing him because of his injury.

Pain and loathing.

Hanahana lets go. _There is nothing more we’re going to find here. He’s trapped in his own suffering._

Moving on, then. _Yes._

Zazzuwa is close by. In his dreams he’s with a left hand, and he’s running from a ruffian. We slip by unnoticed.

There’s a lot of pain and guilt here too. An old wound that pulses with seeing Alibek cut down, the shimmering blade sticking out through his gut. Deep devotion as a bulwark against despair, if he can just care for Alibek, that will make up for it.

A mote of hope, perhaps, tinged in my image. Years spent pandhandling in his youth, and getting involved with organized crime because he could crack skulls even with only one hand.

We wake at my direction, cutting our excursion short. “He’s in love.”

“What makes you say that?”

I shake my head. “Or rather, he was. With Alibek.”

“He’s a lover of men? There was a memory of a woman in there—”

“One can be both, Hana,” I say. “This may prove troublesome, I don’t think Alibek is amenable to serving me, and Zazzuwa will go with him.”

“You have a predeliction for old, sick, lonely people, you know that?” She says.

I turn to her, surprised. “What?”

“Are you hoping to induct Zazzuwa? He’d make a fine paladin.”

I nod. “He would. But so would anyone. I’m going to do what I can for them without arousing suspicion, then find a different propective ‘paladin,’ as you say.”

She grins. “Does that mean we can finish business and move on to leisure now?”

“Yes.”


End file.
